I needed to ground myself yesterday so I spent the evening in my safe space - the cinema. It was such a pleasure to check out The Color Purple, which if you saw my previous post, is also a musical. (I watched Mean Girls on Sunday, and then this last night.)
Many of us know the book, well it might be an odd choice to tell this story as a musical, however I felt that feelings and stories were really well expressed through the musical form. The choreography was exceptional, with every day actions timed to the beat of the music. The film despite being quite beautiful at times, was also upsetting and heart-breaking. The performances are superb, and it was great to see black people occupy spaces on screen, where we would normally see non-black people. I felt that the visual storytelling technique really illustrated how abuse in a community can become a learned behaviour no matter which race is causing the abuse. It's behaviours that needs to be unlearned. And this goes for any form of abuse or 'tradition'. The film highlights the need to question why people behave a certain way, and how one could potentially face that.
I would encourage everyone who loves cinema and powerful voices (dialogue and song), to support this film. This is such a solid film, with tremendous power. The only thing that would have made this better for me would have been more focus on the queer element of the original story, which is such an important factor especially how it related to loving one's own body. Taraji Henson as Shug Avery was absolutely delightful by the way. What an incredible performance!