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Movie Review: The Color Purple

Movie Review: The Color Purple


Byron Hooper
11/18/96

The movie "The Color Purple," directed by Steven Speilberg, was, in general, a
satisfactory film. It was enjoyable, if you don't consider accuracy towards the
novel it is portraying important. Speilberg obviously had little, if any,
respect toward the original story, by Alice Walker. He slaughtered a story most
people had heard of, but never read. I thought the movie itself was rather good.
It had it's own good and bad points. Up until about when Sofia left Harpo, they
were almost identical. After that they are almost two different stories with
the same ending.

The movie was written purely for entertainment. It added a small number of
scenes, but cut more than it added. Also, it emphasized different parts of the
story than the book. The film is about a young black girl growing up in the
south, abused by, first, her father, then her husband, whom she had no choice in
marrying, as is the book. But in the novel, after Celie found her sister's
letters, the main focus was Nettie in Africa. In the movie, the section on
Africa was only ten, fifteen minutes long, and the rest was based more on the
rest of Celie's life.

I'll admit, most movies, that follow the book that they're based on word for
word are pretty monotonous (i.e. Dune), but this particular movie probably would
have been better, at least in my own opinion,