The Color Purple Essay, Research Paper

Byron Hooper

11/18/96

The Color Purple film review

The Color Purple

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,