Why Steven Spielberg’s black drama The Color Purple remains controversial 40 years on

This is the latest instalment in our From the Vault feature series, in which we reflect on culturally significant movies celebrating notable anniversaries. When Steven Spielberg was announced as the director of The Color Purple (1985), which turns 40 this month, few thought he was the right person for the job. Not even, it seems, Spielberg himself. Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel concerns the plight of poor African-Americans in early 20th-century Georgia. “You need a black director for this,” Spielberg told producer Quincy Jones. The response? “Did you have to be an alien to direct E.T.?” Whatever his suitability for the role, Spielberg’s intentions were honourable. He waived his usual US$15 million fee for the US$40,000 Directors Guild of America (DGA) minimum and cast unknowns in the leads. Walker wrote the first draft of the screenplay, which was later revised by Dutch writer Menno Meyjes, but Walker remained on board throughout, helping the actors nail the tricky Southern dialect. The story follows Celie (played by Desreta Jackson as a child, then Whoopi Goldberg), a young woman whose life is shaped by systemic cruelty. Abused by her father, she has her children taken from her, then is forced to marry the violent Mister (Danny Glover). Mister mistreats her, drives her sister Nettie (Akosua Busia) away – hiding the letters she sends – and openly favours his mistress, the glamorous blues singer Shug (Margaret Avery). Over the years, as Celie waits for word from Nettie, she slowly learns to stand up for herself. “I don’t know how to fight,” she says at one point. “All I know how to do is stay alive.” The performers are uniformly excellent, particularly breakthrough stars Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, who plays the imperious Sofia, a woman who refuses to bow to anyone – defiance that proves to be her undoing in the film’s most affecting sequence. Spielberg’s famous craft is also much in evidence. No matter how pathetic Mister is, he always looms large and imposing in the frame. And the postbox becomes a symbol of stillborn hope, as the camera zooms into its mouth looking for a letter that will never come. Yet, despite the craft and deep feeling, there are frequently times when something seems slightly off. Jones’ score is too syrupy, and Allen Daviau’s cinematography is almost too pretty: for example, the scene where Nettie is dragged, kicking and screaming, from Mister’s property was shot at magic hour – the last part of the day before sunset – bathing the violence in golden light. You would need a heart of stone not to be moved by Celie’s plight, but tonally the film is all over the place, with scenes of broad comedy clattering into sudden tragedy. And Spielberg’s direction sometimes slips into pastiche; the juke-joint sequences feel borrowed from old movies, rather than any kind of lived experience. Upon release, the film faced criticism for the way it depicted most of its black male characters as violent abusers. But this is a problem inherent in slimming novels down to a manageable length for a movie – a lot of nuance is lost in the edit. “It’s one woman’s story,” said Winfrey at the time. “It was not meant to be the history of every black man or woman in this country and I wish they’d just shut up about it.” Spielberg said: “Most of the criticism came from directors [who] felt that we had overlooked them, and that it should have been a black director telling a black story. That was the main criticism. “The other criticism was that I had softened the book. I have always copped to that. I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker’s book.” He would receive support from an unlikely source: Platoon director Oliver Stone, hardly known for his bleeding heart. “It’s an excellent movie,” said Stone. “And it wouldn’t have been done if it hadn’t been Spielberg. It’s not like everyone says, that he ruined the book. That’s horses**t. Nobody was going to do the book. He made the book live again.” Stone is probably right. Hollywood in the 1980s was not exactly overrun with filmmakers rushing to tell authentic African-American stories, and it would be another two decades before anyone returned to Walker’s source material. Even then, Blitz Bazawule’s well-regarded 2023 musical made relatively few ripples. Looking back, The Color Purple is perhaps more interesting as a pivot point in Spielberg’s career than as a film in its own right. This new, serious-minded director would go on to make the likes of Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, leaving children’s entertainment behind. The establishment agreed. The Color Purple received 11 Academy Award nominations, including best picture. It won none, holding the dubious joint record – with the 1977 film The Turning Point – for the most nominations without a single victory. It also holds another distinction: no film has ever received so many nods without its director even securing a nomination. 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Why Steven Spielberg’s black drama The Color Purple remains controversial 40 years on

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The 1985 film, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey, was much criticised upon release but received 11 Oscar nominations

The 1985 film, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey, was much criticised upon release but received 11 Oscar nominations