“The Color Purple” is Story of Pain, of Self-Love, and Hope

The Color Purple (2023), directed by Blitz Bazawule and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, is as beautiful as it is tragic.

Adapted from the book by Alice Walker, the musical-on-film chronicles the lives of three Black women—Celie, Sofia, and Shug Avery—and explores the different ways they survive oppression in the American South during the early twentieth century.

At the heart of the story is Celie (Fantasia Barrino). Everything terrible that could have happened to her did. As a teenager, her children were taken away from her. Then, her father married her off to an older man (Colman Domingo), already with children of his own, who abuses her physically and emotionally. Her sister Nettie is her only source of joy, but, avoiding abuse herself, Nettie is forced to flee and never come back.

As the years roll on, Celie gets older, and is left completely alone—without her children, without her sister, in a house taking care of a man who hurts her, taking care of children that are not her own. She could’ve gone numb completely if wasn’t for her sewing talents.

First Sofia (Danielle Brooks) storms into Celie’s life—a funny, boisterous, and heavy-fisted woman determined to marry her step-son. And she does.

Then Shug Avery (Taraji B. Henson) comes to stay—a glamorous performer who entrances people with her beauty and feminine confidence. And stylishly.

Shug and Celie become unlikely friends, and, one day, they go walking through a meadow of purple flowers—Shug intent on finding Celie’s joy, Celie in awe of Shug’s attitude toward life.

As they stroll, Shug suggests it’s a dishonor to God to walk past the color purple and not stop to admire its beauty.

Celie—so acclimated to being hurt, so accustomed to going through the motions, and unaware of any alternatives—is almost incapable of joy, almost incapable of taking a break just for the sake of it. Almost.

Here, Celie takes a moment for the flowers, for the color purple, and the winds ever-so-slowly start to shift, unveiling the seed of power inside her.

These three women have been cast away from their loved ones and forced to build a life on their own, not necessarily by choice.

Celie, without any family or loved ones to understand her, sticks to her routine and quietly endure the pains of her life solo. Shug, rejected by her parents for wanting more, uses her beauty and intrigue to live an independent life that only exists far away. Sofia, who took abuse from everyone else as a kid, found a way to fight back to be heard, to be respected, and thereby must walk away, on her own, from anyone who tries to abuse her again.

These dynamic and opposing influences of Sofia and Shug Avery help Celie to find a more loving path for herself, maybe somewhere between them. And with time, she finds it.

Celie sings:

“I believe I have inside me
Everything that I need to live a bountiful life
With all the love alive in me
I’ll stand as tall as the tallest tree”

She puts on lipstick. She leaves her husband. She starts a clothing business. She finally sees that piece of God in herself, that piece of God that everyone noticed in her all along.

Meanwhile, times change. The film starts in 1907 and ends in 1947. In forty years, American women won the right to vote, wars and revolutions havocked the international order, and cinema was invented and made popular across the nation.

Films like The Color Purple bring to light to human stories not often mentioned in textbooks.

The problem with history is that it’s often about memorizing dates and taught in siloes. In truth, history is timeless and messy, and most of it wasn’t written down. But when we look at society today, at all the bad and all the glory, we find explanations when we look to the past, when we look to how the human experiences have evolved.

Celie’s is a story of hope. Amidst all that injustice, all that unfairness, she finds her way.

A hundred years has passed now. Still, may her story continue to inspire hope: in ourselves, in the people we love, and for even better times ahead.

Watch the film in theaters now.