The Colour Purple (2023)

 

Genre: Musical/ Drama

Time: 2h 20mins

Director: Blitz Bazawule

Quick Summary: A woman faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this being a musical admittedly. While I praised the previous adaptation for balancing the emotional moments with the more cheery ones, this time it feels very sharply disjointed as we get one moment where two characters are involved with some horrible abuse and then suddenly go on a really happy walk and singsong. This happens a lot actually, something horrible happens and then we move on to really happy song time.

As for the songs, they were instantly forgettable. I don't remember a single one and honestly, I think at the time they all sounded the same. They all had that, happy, soul, dance upbeat kind of sound. I found them to be really distracting too as they didn't forward the story at all, they were just kinda there.

This does have some of the rawness of the story that the previous one was missing. The abuse is shown a tiny bit more in-depth. But there wasn't a lot and it came out really underwhelming. I mean the ending scene at a dinner table was incredibly quick and it was over before I even blinked. For a scene as powerful as that is supposed to be, I was disappointed.

Something else I found a little bizarre but the main actress also really underwhelming for me which then actually made me prefer the supporting cast. Shug I enjoyed it a lot more this time, as she is a lot more fun and free. Her musical numbers being snappy and upbeat made sense.  Sofia too, though she is nothing compared to Ophra, I found her to be funnier and more of a fighting woman, and I'll admit her sadder scenes did hit me (a first for this film).

Really the only main thing I can fully praise this film for is how pretty it looked. It captured the look of the 1920s without modernising it. The costumes felt plucked right out of that era, and the landscapes looked as if it was shot almost 100 years ago (in a good way). Sure, it's flashy during the musical numbers but something had to keep me entertained. 

Ultimately, this tries to recreate the gut-punching emotional feeling of the book and the previous adaptation, but really it just swings and misses. 

5/10

"Celie: I'm not ready for you to leave. Mister don't beat me as much.

Shug Avery: Beat you? Why he do that?

Celie: Cause I ain't you, I guess."