The Colour Purple, a stage adaptation of Alice Walker's beloved novel by Marsha Norman, features music and lyrics by Stephen Bray, Allee Willis, and Brenda Russell, although it's not a really good musical. The book flattens a lot of the novel, the songs are beautiful but not particularly memorable, and the show's first iteration was bogged down by the excessively grandiose directing vision. Strangely, the most compelling case for a film adaptation comes from the pared-down Broadway revival of Menier Chocolate Factory, which debuted in 2015.
The John Doyle-directed revival, while lacking the grandiose grandeur of the original Broadway production, placed a strong focus on Walker's characters. The actors were allowed the freedom to develop more nuanced performances, which brought out the intimate character study at the core of the play. Cinema can undoubtedly provide artists with a space like this, but it also demands a level of grandeur that hindered the original Broadway show. When faced with this task, filmmaker Blitz Bazawule decides to split the difference, as any sane person would. The musical numbers feature every visual flourish from the movie, while the book passages are realistically staged to showcase the full range of psychological nuance portrayed by the gifted actors.
But the audience's cheers are saved for the three women who appear on the poster. Taraji P. Henson is a flaming ball of fire in her role as Mister's mistress and true love, the lounge singer Shug Avery. Her personality lights up the screen. The movie's musical high point is her big piece, "Push Da Button," a classic show-stopper that Henson eats up with the sly smile of a cat that found out about the canary. Henson's scenes with Celie also feature a heartfelt compassion. The film's finest cinematic moments occur in these sequences, where Bazawule and Laustsen let their most primal desires take control, despite the material downplaying the sapphic romance from the novel. Going back to the position that she
Brooks has to run the gamut of emotions with a narrative that takes her from a lovesick romantic to a woman scorned to a chastened husk and back, and she nails every single one in a powerful performance. From the moment she walks on screen, Brooks commands the attention of the audience. Her magnetic screen presence makes it impossible to look away, and when she's not there—which, regrettably, is not often—you miss her terribly.
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