Danielle Brooks | Bouquets & Brickbats

01/02/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Not so much an adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel (or Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film, for that matter), this ambitious production is based on the Broadway musical which first got to strut its stuff in the early 2000s and has gone through several iterations since. Inevitably, much of the novel’s more hard-hitting elements have been sanded and burnished for consumption by a mass audience.

Directed by Blitz Bazawule, with music composed by Kris Bowers, the result is a film that occasionally bursts into exuberant, joyful life but just as often feels bowdlerised as it struggles to make a song and dance about incidents that don’t quite fit the medium.

We first meet Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) when she’s a teenager, pregnant with her second child – by her father, Alfonso (Deon Cole). Mpasi brilliantly portrays Celie’s loneliness and distress, especially when, as he did with the previous baby, Alfonso takes the infant away from Celie without any explanation. Shortly thereafter, he offers her up as a bride to the heinous ‘Mister’ (Colman Domingo), a musician of sorts who has several motherless kids to care for in his ramshackle home down by the swamp. He needs somebody to get the place in shape and, if Celie is slow in following his orders, he’s all too ready to let his fists do the talking. Colman too, is utterly convincing as a man who’s never had his authority challenged by anyone.

Celie sets to work, determined to look after her new ‘family’ but when her beloved sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey), turns up saying that Alfonso has been making moves on her, Celie begs Mister to allow Nettie to move in with them. He agrees and inevitably, it isn’t long before he attempts to sexually assault her. When she dares to hit back, he throws her out of the house telling her never to return – and Celie has nobody to fight her corner.

The years move inexorably on – a scene where Celie views the changing seasons through the windows of the house as she ages is brilliantly handled. Celie (now played by Fantasia Barrino) has become inured to her own suffering, but redemption arrives in the form of vivacious blues singer, Shug Avery (Taraji B Henson), the woman who Mister reveres above all others and whom he’ll go to any lengths to please. When Celie and Shug form an unlikely alliance, it’s clear that change is in the air…

To give The Color Purple its due, Bazawule brings a whole host of invention to the difficult task of directing this piece, constantly exploring different approaches to a complex project. Cinematographer Dan Lautsen makes everything look luminous and remarkable and I particularly love a fantasy sequence set on a huge gramophone turntable. For me, the film is at its most successful during the big, ensemble pieces with scores of dancers whirling and leaping to vibrant, blues-inflected songs. I should also mention Danielle Brooks’ remarkable performance as Sophia, a powerful and assertive woman, eventually brought to heel by the injustice of the age. Brooks brings genuine verve to her portrayal and the scenes where she languishes in a prison cell provide the film’s most heartbreaking moments.

The relationship between Celie and Shug has been not so much downplayed as eradicated. In the book, it’s explicitly sexual; here it amounts to a quick snog in the cinema and a few meaningful looks, which I think speaks volumes about what makes contemporary American audiences uncomfortable. Why the subject of rape is deemed acceptable for depiction but a concensual lesbian relationship isn’t remains something of a head scrambler. Go figure.

The story’s conclusion, where everybody gathers to let bygones be bygones, feels every bit as unlikely as it did in the original story and, if I’m honest, it’s in this sequence where it all gets a little too schmaltzy for my liking.

So, once again, here is another of those curate’s egg productions (a phrase I use far too often). It’s good in parts (sometimes very good) but elsewhere, I find the ingredients a little too bland for my taste.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney

16/09/19

Once dubbed ‘the most evil man in Britain’ by a tabloid newspaper, Chris Morris arrives at a sold-out Cameo Cinema for the public screening of his first new movie in nine years, in advance of its October general release. In conversation afterwards, he proves to be anything but evil – a genial and entertaining fellow, who, like so many others, is just appalled by the everyday madness of the modern world. While it might not carry the devastating punch of Four Lions, his debut feature, The Day Shall Come is nevertheless a fascinating tale, inspired by real events – or, as the movie’s strapline prefers to describe it, ‘based on a hundred true stories.’

Moses Al Bey Al Shabazz (Marchánt Davis) is an impoverished preacher, living in the Miami projects where he runs The Church of Six Stars. He is constantly assuring his followers (all four of them) that one day they shall inherit the earth, which has been ‘accidentally dominated by the white man.’ But it’s hard to keep your followers on board when you’re feeding them on whatever the staff at Wendy’s are about to throw into the dumpster every night. Moses also believes that God and the Devil regularly converse with him through the medium of a duck, but this might be more symptomatic of the fact that he refuses to take the meds that prevent his delusions.

Unfortunately for Moses, ambitious special agent Kendra (Anna Kendrick) has him in her sights. It seems the FBI find it easier to meet their targets by entrapping hapless individuals than by catching actual terrorists in the act, and Moses is clearly a possible target. Kendra sets about trying to lure him aboard with offers of large amounts of cash and/or some plutonium. As Moses and his family are about to be evicted from their ‘farm’ for non-payment of rent, he finds the offer of $50,000 tempting – though it drives a wedge between him and his wife, Venus (Danielle Brooks). He’s not so keen on the plutonium, however, as he maintains a stringent ‘anti-weapon’ policy. Indeed, his follower’s only have one: a toy crossbow. As the planned sting steams headlong into ever more surreal waters, it’s clear there are no limits to the depths the FBI will plumb in order to fill their terrorist quota, and no barriers they won’t smash down in their haste to disassociate themselves from any suggestion of wrong-doing.

The Day Shall Come takes a little while to get into its stride but, once all the elements are in place, it delivers a large helping of caustic laughs, before heading in an unexpectedly poignant direction. Davis makes an auspicious debut as the film’s central character, a man who exudes likability even as he careers towards his own self-destruction, and there’s a nice performance by Kayvan Novak as FBI stooge, Reza.

It will be interesting to see what American audiences make of this film, but fans of the elusive Mr Morris will not be disappointed by what’s on offer here.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney