Continuing my plan to watch every Steven Spielberg movie in order, I come to The Color Purple.I think this is hands down the best movie of 1985. Yes I include Out Of Africa in that statement. It's not my favourite movie of 1985 (so many more easy to watch, enjoyable movie experiences that year) but it's the best. It's so powerful.This is an insanely brave move by Spielberg!! Looking for a bit of credibility from his peers he chose to make a movie about subjects that are not suited to the movies! It is not an easy movie to sell, nor is It an easy movie watch. The main character Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) endures rape, incest, sexism, an abusive husband, domestic violence, chauvinism, the loss of her sister (The only person who truly loved her) and the loss of her children at birth. Danny Glover is one serious piece of $hït in this!! He is vile, evil and despicable. Great acting. All of the cast is superb, none more so than Oprah Winfrey, she is superb as Sophia (what happens to her may be the saddest part of the movie) likewise Margaret Avery and Willard E. Pugh (who is the comedy relief as Harpo) Laurence Fishburn has a small role too. And then, at the center of the movie is Whoopi Goldberg in what must surely rank as one of the most amazing debut performances in movie history. She should have been the winner of the Academy Award for best actress that year. She is perfect. Sady we lost a great serious actress when she started going down the comedic route. I only have real complaint in that there should have been a tender and touching scene for Winfrey, but for some reason Spielberg decides to go for a slapstick scene that misses the mark. Once again a Spielberg movie had me in tears, the end is one of the great heart-rending moments in the movies. The Academy's prejudice against Spielberg is blatantly evident in the fact that he was not nominated for Best Director. The movie received 11 nominations, for Best picture, Best Actress, has 2 nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Best Writing, Best Art Direction, Best Cinamatography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Song, Best Score and Best Make Up, and a Best Director nod is conspicuously absent. And although The Color Purple had 11 nominations, it won not a single Oscar. His movies made too much money and were too popular for him to be considered a real film maker. The Color Purple was the fourth highest grossing movie of 1985 (behind Back To The Future, Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Rocky IV) grossing $179 million at the domestic box office.

A couple of years ago this would be one of my very rare 9+ votes. I admit, I lost it every time Celie's kids come back from Africa.But the past couple of years have solidified my stance that politics and Holywood SHOULD NOT MIX.It is Winfrey and Goldberg's outspoken politics and rhetoric that have turned me off. I can no longer watch them. It is because of them, and that reason, that I give it a "1"

When Spike Lee first saw this Spielberg's film of The Color Purple, he noted in his journal "He's Gotta Have It" a complaint that Mister (Danny Glover) - while shown to be a product of his mean father, and somewhat redeemed from a distance - is portrayed as a menacing figure without explicitly showing cause and effect that sources his anger and rage back to the white men that keep him down. If this matter were addressed in filming, the movie would not be improved by it. This perspective "look what the white man made me do" does not allow Mister to own his mistreatment of Celie, the character from whose perspective the story is told so effectively both in the Alice Walker book and the Spielberg film. If discussing this film with a lesbian movie fan, she may be dismissive of it and eventually reveal her disappointment that the intimacy with Shug is not more overtly sexual. Even though it would stick out like a sore thumb in the more tender and spiritual-focused film as a whole. As Celie eases into a sense of self respect and value, the film avoids what would read on screen as a diminishing of that into sexual terms. The focus of the story and narrative is right.My own fear any time I consider watching this film yet again is that the emotion can sneak up on the viewer and if Spielberg wants the us to well up it will most likely happen. Some call that manipulation. I call it effective and engaging film making. Steven Spielberg directs the attention of the audience with care, introducing scene transitions he had not attempted before in his work and carrying us from exuberant moments to trauma and uplift. Spielberg's love of cinema and the craft of directing does come first, as people are divided as to the repeated use of western movie head-turns and slow takes before a punch is thrown. This is used to comic effect in most cases, though the most provoked and consequential punches thrown are off camera or obscured in the moment of impact. We may see the moment before, and feel the inevitability, and the aftermath and consequences. Even with Quincy Jones taking over the music from John Williams, there is an aesthetic of emotion that is palpable from the start. The separation of two sisters can be as jarring and shattering as a shark attack. Watching this film decades later, the way characters are presented allows you to see Celie without remembering Whoopie as a host of The View and Danny Glover without being distracted by the legacy of Lethal Weapon. Oprah Winfrey going through the indignities her character endures lends resonance to it all because of her iconic status. To various degrees, this can be said of many now familiar faces in the film. In the hands of a lesser director, a straightforward recording of the content might be too uncommitted. Steven Spielberg takes the mundane and the gentle and makes it just enough larger than life that it finds emotional truth.

Alice Walker's book is truly riveting, being hard-hitting, powerful and incredibly poignant. Anybody who hasn't yet read it, it is very highly recommended.In 1985, a film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg was released garnering several well-deserved Oscar nominations but sadly winning none. While the book is more detailed and has more depth, and the film is not quite as hard-hitting (though hardly sugar-coated and definitely not Disneyfied), this is in no way denouncing a wonderful early effort from Spielberg.Not quite one of his best films (not among his worst either), but, despite the worry as to whether his style would mesh with the tone of the story told, 'The Color Purple' is a strong sign of Spielberg taking on a very mature subject early on in his career (being before 'Schindler's List') and making a film, that regardless of how it compares to the source material, that's still powerful and moving. For me its only fault is that for my tastes everything felt too neatly wrapped up at the end.Spielberg directs impeccably however, under him the powerful drama never gets heavy-handed despite that it easily could have done and it is also genuinely poignant without falling into over-sentimentality that Spielberg has often been criticised for. 'The Color Purple' looks wonderful, being exquisitely shot and with evocative production design.Quincy Jones' score works remarkably well too, one that sears and soars with ease without being jarring or intrusive. The script provokes a lot of thought and has a lot of honesty and emotion. The hard-hitting story is as hoped told powerfully and movingly, not trivialising the horrors of its themes and the consequences of what happens to the characters.Whoopi Goldberg was rarely better than she is in 'The Color Purple', a wonderful performance with her face and eyes telling so much and one can really see how much damage what she went through has done. Danny Glover is sublimely nasty in one of his best performances worthy of an award nomination but overlooked. Pre-TV career Oprah Winfrey is in a different role, and does remarkably well, while Margaret Avery is affecting.Overall, a powerful and moving film, a worthy adaptation of an even better book. 9/10 Bethany Cox