The book, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, is an unbelievable novel that was able to receive the Pulitzer prize and even the National Book Award. It takes place in the early 1900s and throughout 1910 and 1920. A girl named Celie goes through a rough life and almost keeps to it, but another woman swoops in and gives her the strength to go against it, becoming a strong independent woman. Making this intense plot of a subtle and dramatic book into an exciting, impactful movie was a hard task. To my surprise, however, it was a moderate representation of the book. This can be more easily understood in examples of both omitted and added scenes that the director Steven Spielberg took upon the movie. It wasn’t surprising to see that Spielberg accepted to direct this movie, seeing as he has done well known movies of a dramatic genre such as The BFG and E.T.

The first example of a changed scene would be when Celie, in the beginning of the book, was a young girl being raped by her father, which was traumatic to her and the readers: “Dear god, I am 14 years old… He never had a kine word to say to me Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (Walker 1). This beginning scene adds a way for the reader to fully understand the extent of Celie’s pain and very abnormal life. In the movie this is changed, however, when this scene is replaced with a very different one that consists Celie and her sister playing in a field. At this point, we see a game similar to patty cake, where they sing a song and clap their hands with each other getting faster each time. It additionally rids of some sympathy, but the scene where Celie has the child is added keeping some of the lost sympathy. Furthermore, instead of including what would seem like meaningless words, it has a chorus that talks about how they will never be apart and a word that was close to each other’s hearts, Makidada. This motif of the movie, as it turns out to be, clearly shows Celie and Nettie's connection compared to how the book accomplished it, using Nettie’s letters for the bulk. Overall, this is just one of many examples that exhibit the movies adequate representation of Alice Walker’s book.

These directorial choices continue on when, shortly after Shug started feeling better from her sickness in the novel, she sung at Harpo’s juke joint to have some fun and make a bit of money, one of the songs being kept especially for someone: “Shug saying Miss Celie… She say this song I’m bout to sing is called Miss Celie’s Song. Cause she scratched it out of my head when I was sick” (Walker 74). This event was more subtle in the book, but was important nonetheless, as it showed Celie that she was worth something to someone, and even more, someone she admired, giving her a little more will than she had before. This was not the same in the movie at all, because not only was the song changed, but the way it was presented had been different as well. Here, Shug says that she’s going to sing the song in a similar to the book, but presents it in a way that was much more up front and energetic, not mentioning that they went through the entire song. This created an exciting mood in comparison to the book and also still kept the most important part, being the Celie was finally recognized by someone in her life and was given something to her, providing her hope and willpower. The only issue with the song is the symbolism changing from the one in the book using Celie’s name, which added to it being hers. Overall, this large edit was not bad, but was quite different in large aspects.

With this next scene, I was very tempted to give this movie all 5 stars. I say this for the reason being that the director made an outstanding choice in how to show the movie to its end. Before this can be explained, however, the novel had quite a different representation of how Shug would react to this (which was not in the same way at all). “But God love me, Celie, I don’t have to do all that. Unless I want to. There’s a lot of other things I can do I speck God likes” (Walker 194). This quote very strongly suggests that Shug would feel this invasion of the church to be quite unnecessary and that simpler solutions could be done. Of course, as hinted before, the scene in the movie is undoubtedly different from how Shug would normally react. In this scene, Shug and her group of singers are initially having a battle of song, but the Shug decides that having everyone sing in church would bring people in unity and also runite her with her father, which was also a different aspect from the book. This ultimately displays a very important message: We’re all worshiping same person, and shouldn’t be criticized as that is personal for a person. Not only this, but incorporating it onto the screen makes everything much more up front and easier to catch while also being quite energetic. This leaves the viewers with a lasting positive feeling that continues well into the conclusion of the movie.

The movie was well deserving of the rewards that it had received and provided a acceptable performance at representing a complex text. From the opening scene of the movie all the way up to the end, there were certainly controversial provisions to the film, yet the highs outweighed these provisions to a certain extent. As written before, this movie was directed by one of the “all-time greats” of the Hollywood industry, and so was a moderate performance by him as well. If I were to tell the interested souls how to react towards this movie, I would recommend this to anyone as a 1-time watch.