These days, Steven Spielberg's generation-spanning tale of black farmers is better known as the movie that he didn't win any Oscars for. The Color Purple bagged 11 Oscar noms but walked away with zero statuettes. That was BSL (Before Schindler's List), when the king of crowd-pleasers was about as popular with the Academy as a bag of rotting frogs. If he made it today, it would sweep the board.
And rightly so. It may be dunked in sentimentality, but Purple is a remarkable, dark and timeless piece of filmmaking. From the complex relationship between Danny Glover's vicious patriarch and his downtrodden kids to the borderline-lesbian bond between friends Whoopi Goldberg and Margaret Avery, it's full of unsettling moments that cast long shadows across the audience.
DVD Extras:
Spielberg's refusal to provide commentaries is a given, but surely the DVD makers could have lured Goldberg or Winfrey into a comfy recording studio for a few hours to talk Purple? At least all the major players crop up on a trio of solid new docs: From Book To Screen, Casting And Acting and Making Of...The fourth doc - - The Color Purple: The Musical - - isn't a misprint. It seems Spielberg thinks, what with all the gospel stuff scattered through the script, he was making a musical in disguise. These wacky directors, eh?
