The Color Purple (1985)
Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985) arrives in his filmography as something of a pivot point, sandwiched between the rollicking adventure of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the previous year and the science-fiction spectacle that bookended much of his early career. Based on Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film spans roughly four decades in the life of Celie, a Black woman in the American South whose story moves from devastating subjugation to something far harder to extinguish. The source material had already attracted serious literary attention, and adapting it carried real weight and real risk, particularly for a director whose name had become synonymous with crowd-pleasing blockbusters. (For a sense of just how deep that blockbuster reputation runs, I've written about Jaws and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, two films that more or less define one side of his career.) The screenplay was written by Menno Meyjes, working from Walker's text, and produced through Spielberg's own Amblin Entertainment alongside Quincy Jones Productions and Warner Bros. Pictures, with Jones himself serving a dual function as both producer and composer.
The casting is where the production takes its boldest and most consequential decisions. Whoopi Goldberg had not appeared in a feature film before this, and the role of Celie, a woman ground down by years of cruelty who must find reserves of self she barely knows exist, is about as demanding a debut as the industry can offer. Alongside her, Danny Glover, at the time probably best known to audiences for smaller television and theatre work (he would become a far more familiar face the following year in Lethal Weapon), plays Albert, the man who becomes Celie's tormentor. Margaret Avery and Willard E. Pugh round out a cast that leans heavily on performers who, at the time, carried relatively little mainstream Hollywood recognition. Then there is Oprah Winfrey, already a rising name in American television, cast as Sofia in what was her film debut. It is a production full of first times, and the cumulative effect of that rawness is difficult to manufacture.
Cinematographer Allen Daviau, who had already worked with Spielberg on E.T., brings a quality of light to the film that feels rooted in the American South without tipping into postcard prettiness. There is warmth in the palette, golden fields and sun-drenched porches, but it sits alongside shadow in a way that keeps the visual register honest to the material. The images linger rather than cut nervously, and editor Michael Kahn, a long-standing Spielberg collaborator whose work across the director's career includes Saving Private Ryan, shapes the pacing to accommodate both quiet, interior moments and the broader sweep of a story covering forty years of a woman's life. Quincy Jones's score operates across a wide tonal range, drawing on gospel, blues and orchestral swell, music that is acutely aware of its own power but, for the most part, earns what it reaches for.
The Color Purple can have you laughing out loud one minute and wrecked the next, and it earns both without ever feeling like it is playing you.
I will admit I did not expect that kind of emotional range from Spielberg, a name I tend to file under blockbusters and wonder rather than hard, grown-up drama. This is him in a completely different register, his first serious swing at adult material, and he lands it beautifully.
The acting is the heart of it, and it is superb almost across the board. Whoopi Goldberg, in her film debut, carries the whole thing as Celie, a woman worn down by decades of abuse who slowly, painfully finds her feet, and it is a devastating piece of work. Danny Glover is fearsome as the man who makes her life a misery, and Oprah Winfrey, of all people, is a revelation as the irrepressible Sofia, who had me roaring with laughter one moment before the film turned the screw on her. That so many of them were unknowns or first-timers makes it more remarkable still.
I had it in my head that this was based on a true story, and I was surprised to learn it is not; it comes from Alice Walker's Pulitzer-winning novel. The fact I believed it tells you everything, because you can feel the truth in every frame. It does not flinch from the hard things, the racism, the cruelty, the trauma its women are made to endure, and yet it builds, against all of that, towards something like triumph.
And it is a beauty to look at and to listen to. Quincy Jones's music is extraordinary, swelling in all the right places without ever tipping into schmaltz, and the cinematography is Spielberg at the very top of his game.
If I have a reservation it is a slight one, that now and then it reaches so hard for your tear ducts you can almost see the hand doing it, but that is a quibble against something this fully felt. Four and a half stars, and about as close to perfect as a film like this gets.
The Color Purple sits in a curious and rather interesting position in the canon: a film that collected eleven Academy Award nominations in 1986 and won none, a fact that generated genuine controversy at the time and is still discussed. Whatever the awards story, the film endures as a reminder that Spielberg's range has always been wider than his popular reputation suggests, and that great performances, given the right material and a director willing to get out of their way, have a habit of outlasting any amount of industry noise. Some films earn their emotion; this one does the work.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 1985 | Watched: 2026-09-13
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Color Purple (1985) on YouTube
Where to watch
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