[Note: This review was published on 12 Sep 1985, three months before the film’s release.]
As with many of Spielberg's previous films, Purple opens with a bang -- literally. A day laborer in the rural Dixie South of the late 1910's asks his fourteen-year-old daughter Celie to come into his bedroom to cut his hair. She looks a little nervous (she asks him if he wouldn't rather go out on the porch, where she usually cuts his hair), but agrees to do it. Halfway through the haircut, however, her father shows that he has another kind of "do it" in mind, and proceeds to rape her.
But not before what has got to be the most exciting single-room chase scene in the history of film. Celie bolts for the door, but her father tackles her in the doorway. Spielberg's ever-mobile camera tracks Celie's nails as she is dragged back into the room, and the door slammed behind her. Celie and her father then chase one another around the room, destroying every stick of furniture, until Celie is finally subdued. Afterward, the haircut continues, lending a symmetry to the scene and giving the viewer a chance to catch his breath.
And, impossible as it may seem, the action picks up after this incredible opening. Through an artful montage sequence, Spielberg communicates that the opening scene is repeated many times over the following years, with Celie often running interference for her younger sisters. Eventually Celie has two babies by her father, and Spielberg sets a suitably spooky mood as the father heads into the woods to destroy the babies after each birth.
But the bulk of the movie concerns Celie and her sister Nettie after they leave home. Celie's father marries her off to one of his buddies, Adolph Caesar (A Soldier's Story), and Nettie goes to Africa to tame the natives. The movie has a more intricate plot than Spielberg has produced in a while -- Celie falls in love with an old flame of Caesar's, Rae Dawn Chong (Quest for Fire, Beat Street), and Caesar's son and daughter-in-law get pulled into the story -- but Spielberg always keeps up the pace: Nettie fights pirahna fish and runaway bulldozers; Celie masterminds a daring jailbreak for one of her friends; Chong, who plays a nightclub singer, brings down the house with a couple of show-stopping Broadway- style production numbers.
Which is not to say there are not some slower sequences to lend a rhythm to the film. Several times the viewer is treated to some comic relief as Caesar plays punch to Celie's Judy. And, late in the film, there is a touching scene where Celie kneels beside her father's grave and tearfully forgives him for the hurt he caused her.
But, as the viewer expects, Spielberg brings the movie to a smashing, fever-pitch conclusion. On Nettie's way back from Africa, a Kraut U-boat torpedoes her luxury liner. The ship goes belly up, Nettie is trapped below decks, everything looks utterly hopeless, and then.... But that would be telling. Let's just say that viewers who liked Close Encounters and Cocoon will thoroughly enjoy the ending of this consistently outstanding film.
Copyright © 1985,1996 by Kelvin Thompson
All Rights Reserved
(Updated July 26, 1996.)