The trailer for Blitz Bazawule’s take on The Color Purple has dropped, and it’s a visual stunner that looks packed with hard-earned emotion and commanding performances. The movie is adapted from the award-winning musical developed from the famed 1985 Steven Spielberg film, itself reworked from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker about black women trying to manifest their destinies in early-1900s rural Georgia.
The trailer begins by depicting the harrowing early days of Celie and Nettie, played as adults by Fantasia Barrino and Ciara Wilson, respectively. When Young Celie (Phylicia Mpasi) is taken as a bride by the brutish, so-called “Mister” (Colman Domingo), she and Young Nettie (The Little Mermaid‘s Halle Bailey) swear to write to each other until they can be reunited. Enter Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), a jazz and blues singer with a singular will who inspires Celie and helps her try to reconnect with her sister.
It’s here that the trailer blossoms into a musical tour de force and an art designer’s daydream, helping differentiate the experience from Spielberg’s comparatively stripped-down take on the material. The colors pop, the high notes reverberate, and the entire enterprise appears to be more of a celebration of black culture than a chronicle of suffering and resilience like the original novel. The trailer also offers glimpses at the rest of the cast, including Danielle Brooks, Corey Hawkins, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, and H.E.R.
The script by Marcus Gardley (The Chi) is said to be based on all three previous versions of the story, and Bazawule’s keen eye for powerful framing is on full display here, which he used to great effect in his critically acclaimed debut film The Burial of Kojo as well as in his widely hailed collaboration with Beyoncé, Black is King.
The Color Purple releases on Dec. 25, 2023.
Published: May 22, 2023 06:49 pm