Books vs. Movies
In this podcast we set out to answer the age old question: is the book really always better than the movie?
Books vs. Movies
Ep. 36 The Color Purple by Alice Walker vs. The Color Purple (2023)
What happens when a timeless story like "The Color Purple" meets the grandeur of a musical adaptation? As someone who first encountered this narrative back in high school and has revisited it several times since, I couldn't resist exploring how the 2023 musical film breathes new life into Alice Walker's classic. Join me as I unpack the intricate layers of Celie's journey. Through the lens of this adaptation, we examine how the powerful themes of resilience and self-discovery are amplified by the film's musical elements, and how these elements manage to stay true to the heart of Walker's story while offering fresh insights.
Celie's relationships with her family members, each fraught with their own secrets and struggles, form the poignant core of this narrative. We trace her complex dynamics with her stepfather, her husband Mister, and the spirited Sofia. The vibrant presence of Shug Avery adds depth and color, contrasting Celie's muted world and helping her find her voice. By highlighting these interactions, we paint a vivid picture of the courage and strength that define Celie's character, examining how the musical adaptation handles these story lines with both sensitivity and innovation.
Wrapping up this episode, we take a closer look at the storytelling techniques employed in the musical adaptation compared to the original novel. Creative liberties, such as new story arcs involving Shug's family and Mr.'s redemptive acts, are explored for how they enrich and expand the narrative. Stay tuned for next week's episode, where I'll be diving into "Farewell, My Queen" and its film adaptation, promising another journey through the fascinating world of literature and cinema. Don't forget to share your thoughts and leave feedback to help others discover this passion project.
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Welcome to Books vs Movies, the podcast where I set out to answer the age-old question is the book really always better than the movie? I'm Yuvia, an actress and book lover based out of New York City, and today I will be talking about the Color Purple by Alice Walker and its 2023 adaptation, the Color Purple, starring Fantasia Brino, taraji P Henson and Danielle Brooks. Hi everyone. So I'm excited to talk about this book because I do really love this book, but I wasn't sure if this was the time to bring it to the podcast, simply because the only thing or the only adaptation of it that was available to stream was the musical adaptation, the Color Purple. Now, I have no issue with this being a musical by any means, but it is one of those things that it's like. Well, technically, the Broadway musical was based on the book, but the film is based off of the Broadway musical, so there is kind of two degrees of separation there between this particular adaptation and the book. Unfortunately, the original film, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg, was not available to stream. But I just said, well, you know what? The musical is still based off of the book. It's not like the musical. The Broadway musical is based off the film which is based off the book, because it's not like the musical. The Broadway musical is based off the film which is based off the book, because then I feel like that would be too many degrees of separation. But yeah, but I really wanted to bring it because I hadn't seen the musical adaptation. I actually haven't seen the original adaptation either, but I hadn't seen the musical adaptation and I was really sad when I missed out it was playing. So, for those of you that don't know, I lived very, very briefly in New York for three months in 2016. And then I had to go back home for a variety of different reasons, before I officially moved back to New York in 2017. So, while I was living in New York in 2016, the Color Purple, the musical, had gotten its revival starring Cynthia Erivo I was going to say Cynthia Brooks, no, it's Danielle Brooks and Cynthia Erivo, who is currently in the Wicked adaptation film adaptation. And I reread the Color Purple at that time because it was part of Emma Watson's book club and I was like, great, I'm going to watch the adaptation. And I was planning on getting rush tickets like the last the day before I went back to Texas, and then it just didn't happen. So I missed out on watching that particular Broadway revival and I was really sad. So I'm glad I at least got to see the musical film adaptation.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's the story and let's go ahead and get started. So the Color Purple by Alice Walker was originally published in 1982 and it follows our protagonist, celie. Celie lives a very difficult life and she's basically just surviving. However, her life changes little by little for the better after her husband's lover, suge Avery, comes into her life. Suge teaches Celie how to live and, most importantly, how to love. The 2023 adaptation of the Color Purple is directed by Blitz Bazzavule and stars Fantasia Brino, taraji P Henson and Danielle Brooks, and it follows the story of a woman who lives a very difficult life but eventually learns to find strength, hope and love through the different bonds of sisterhood that she makes throughout her life. So, yeah, this is my third, no, second time.
Speaker 1:My third time reading the book, second time rereading the Color Purple. The first time I read it was part of high school. It was, you know, stereotypical. This is required reading for high school. And then I read it again as part of Emma Watson's book club. And then I read it again this year to fulfill one of my 2024 reading challenge prompts, which was read a book by a blind or visually impaired author, and this is number one on the list. And since I've never seen the original film, I was like this is a great time to impaired author, and this is number one on the list. And I, since I've never seen the original film, I was like this is a great time to watch it. And then I couldn't find it for streaming. But I was like, okay, at least now I can watch the adaptation, because I never got to see it in theaters either. But I really, really love this book.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't remember how I felt about it when I first read it in high school, I think in high school I was maybe just a little bit sexual, sexualized. Wow, I was a little bit shocked by the sexual aspects of the book, just because I was you know it's, you're a teenager and like like, whenever you hear like sex, it's like funny, you know that kind of thing. So I think I was just more scandalized by that than really remembering it having an impact on me. But by the time I read it, however many years later, I was at that point 25. So you know, I could handle reading about sex without being scandalized and I enjoyed it. And then I reread it again and I still really, really love this book. So I am excited to talk about it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I am so that I was just kind of surprised by with the musical adaptation was just how quickly the story goes. Like it just moves so fast, so so fast, and I feel like the original film probably didn't move through the events of the book that fast. But it makes total sense when I think about it, because the film has to tell the story but it also has to find a way to incorporate songs to tell the story that you're trying to tell and evoke the emotional responses that you need to evoke through the music, without you still have to remain faithful to the source material. So I imagine it's a lot more difficult to adapt a book into a musical for that reason. But I feel like they did a great job overall.
Speaker 1:As I said, it was just more of a. I was more of just like wow, this is like. This is moving so fast and yet kind of slow I don't know how to explain it Like the events of the book just happened so quickly and like things were shifted around for pacing reasons. But at this. But then I would look at like the runtime and it'd be like, oh, we still have like quite a bit of film left and we still need all of this to tell, but we skipped all this other stuff. So that's what I mean in terms of and I'm not saying that I was checking the time because I was bored or anything like that, I wasn't it was more of just like does this mean the musical is almost over Because we skipped quite a lot? And then I would check the time and it's like no, we still have quite a bit of runtime left, but let's get into it. First things first. This is not a change. I just want to give a shout out to the Whoopi Goldberg cameo in the adaptation. Whoopi does make a. She was the one that played Celie in the original film directed by Steven Spielberg and she makes a cameo in this one as the midwife that assists young Celie to give birth to her daughter. So shout out to Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaker 1:Throughout the course of the book we find out that Celie's mom was driven mad with grief. Essentially, her first husband was the victim of a horrible hate crime because he was running a successful general store in the town and he was taking a lot of customers away. Even white customers were going to his store because they preferred that store over the white-owned general stores and so this caused a mob of white people to kill him and this kind of drove the mother mad with grief and her new husband. So I will say I know I didn't say spoiler, I'm sorry. I feel like at this point you should know my podcast is full of spoilers. But, spoiler alert, the man that Celie thinks is her father is actually her stepfather and it's one of those things that, like she goes mad with grief. She's not able to care for her children. She's not able to. This guy comes along and marries her and he gets her pregnant every year and with each pregnancy her health just deteriorates until she ends up dying.
Speaker 1:We get a brief glimpse of Celie's mother in the musical, but she is not like she seems of sound mind, like it doesn't seem like she has any sort of mental illness. She in the brief cameo that she makes in the film, she is teaching Celie how to sew and the film does focus or the musical focuses a lot more on Celie's ability to sew and sew very, very well. This is briefly by the end of the book. Celie is running a very successful pants making business where she sews the pants herself. But we don't really, we don't really get like hints of how good she is at sewing until, like her, her business she doesn't really talk about it. The book is written exclusively through letters. So Celie doesn't really talk about her ability to sew until she brings up her business. But like the, the film really, the musical really focuses on Celie's ability to sew and it's a major plot point that she has this ability to sew.
Speaker 1:So Celie in the book does give birth to two children. They are a product of what she thinks is incest Because again, she thinks that the man, her father, died when she was a baby. So the only man she's ever known is her stepfather and her stepfather is the father of her children. So she thinks her children are the product of incest, but they are not, as she ends up finding out later. But after she gives birth to each of them her stepfather comes and just takes them from her. So she she has no idea what happens to her children, like she thinks that he killed them. That is until one day she goes into town and she sees Olivia, her daughter, and she just she looks at this little girl. This little girl looks exactly like her. So she knows that's my daughter, that that's my daughter, and she has a small interaction with the woman who ended Olivia's adoptive daughter and, you know, meets Olivia. And then she doesn't see Olivia for many, many years after that, in the film or in the musical. She doesn't discover. She sees the baby at the general store. So after her biological father is killed, her stepfather takes over the general store. So she works at the general store and when she sees this baby and the baby has dropped something and she picks it up and she sees the name Olivia sewed in the corner of the thing that the baby dropped. And that's when she realizes oh, this is my daughter, olivia. But in the book Olivia technically has another name. I don't remember because everyone calls her Olivia. Even her adoptive mother is like her name is this, but I call her Olivia and I'm not really sure why. She looks like an Olivia to me, so I'm just going to call her Olivia. But in the book, celie knows that that's her child on site because she looks exactly like her.
Speaker 1:Her stepfather ends up marrying Celie off to Mister. He's just known as Mister. His name ends up getting revealed as Albert, but he's called Mister throughout most of the book and the musical refers to him as Mister. He essentially sends Celie off to be married to Mister and one of Mr's sons is named Harpo, and Harpo falls in love with a woman named Sophia.
Speaker 1:Sophia is very headstrong. She's very headstrong. She's very stubborn and, unlike Celie, she is not obedient. Celie is very submissive and obedient. Anything that Mr Watt's done, she does. Sophia is not like that. Sophia does whatever Sophia wants and Harpo kind of wants to control her, have control over her, the way that his father has control over Celie. And so his father's like you need to hit your wife, like that's how I control Celie. And Celie's like yeah, you need to, I agree, you need to hit her. And so Sophia comes and has a conversation with Celie and is like I can't believe you told him to hit me. I had to learn how to fight for myself because it's dangerous being born a girl in this world, and so I've had to fight off men my whole life and I'm not. I'm not gonna let Harpo beat me.
Speaker 1:And in the film, like Sophia, ends up leaving Harpo after the first time that he tries to lay hands on her. He tries but he doesn't succeed. Sophia fights back and he ends up more injured. So it is during this confrontation with Celie that Sophia has a big musical number about like fighting and she tells Celie off and she leaves Harpo. At this point this doesn't happen in the book. They're together, he tries, beating her and again she fights and he ends up in worse shape than she does. So they're together for a few years after that and he keeps trying to beat her and he just doesn't learn his lesson that Sophia's not going to let it happen. So eventually she does leave, but it's not immediately after the first time that he hits her the way it is in the musical.
Speaker 1:We first meet shug avery in the book after she. She's sick, she has some sort of health issues and mister is in love with shug and basically any time that he he's in love with shug. So he does everything he can for her, even though the love isn't necessarily reciprocated. So in the book Shug has some sort of health condition. It's not explicitly said, but she shows up and Celie nurses her back to health and then they start to bond little by little. But in the musical she's a famous blues singer and she happens to be in town. She does stay with Mr and Celie, but she's fine, she's not sick, she doesn't need to be nursed back to health. So one of the things, one of the timeline things that changed in the musical was the moment that Sophia sasses the mayor's wife. The mayor and his wife are, of course, white and Sophia doesn't care that they're white, like she treats them just like she treats everyone else, and this includes giving the mayor's wife attitude and this. The mayor's wife doesn't appreciate that and there's an altercation that ends up with Sophia going to jail. At this point in the musical Sophia has loved Harpo and she's moved on with her second husband. But in the events this does happen in the book as well, but it does happen a lot sooner than it ends up happening in the musical.
Speaker 1:A very important character that I haven't even touched upon yet is Celie's sister, nettie. She and Nettie are incredibly close. They're so close, they're each other's best friends, they're each other's everything, and originally Mr wanted to marry Nettie, but Celie and Nettie's stepfatherfather, tries, is at that point tired of sexually assaulting Seelie and wants to move on to Nettie essentially, and so he says you can't marry Nettie, but you can marry Seelie. And Mr is hesitant, like he wants Nettie. But the stepfather's like, listen, you just need a woman that can cook and clean and take care of your children. Right, like Seelie can do all that. It's you, it's. You can either have her or you don't have either one of the girls. So Mr ends up taking Celie for that reason. He already has, like, quite a few children from his previous marriage. So he just wants someone to come and take care of the children.
Speaker 1:Essentially, after Nettie and Celie's stepfather tries to sexually assault Nettie, she runs away and goes to live with Celie and Mr. Very briefly, of course, mr never wanted Celie, he wanted Nettie. And he also goes into Nettie's room. She denies him and because she denies him he kicks her out and says that she's not allowed to live with them anymore, and so Nettie now has no home to go to, no sister to go to either, and so they end up separated. But Nettie promises to write Celie every single day. Celie never receives those letters. Celie just assumes that her sister is either dead or that her sister forgot about her and she's kind of resigned herself to this possibility. It isn't until she finds out that Mr has never in his life Nettie did keep her promise. Mr just never passed those letters on to Celie. So in the musical the way this is discovered is that Shuh gets the post from the mailman and she sees there's a letter from Nettie and she immediately gives that over to celie and as they're reading it they see like oh, there should be other letters. And then they go to where mr keeps all like his personal stuff and they go like they dig through it and they take all the letters and celie starts reading them in the.
Speaker 1:The book Suge is, since Mr is still in love with her, she essentially is able to. She finds where these letters are and it's not very difficult because she just has to tell Mr like she just has to seduce him or say, get me this and he'll leave the house immediately to go get her whatever she asked for. So it's during one of these moments that she finds the letters and she hands them to Celie. But of course what they do is they unseal the letters like they steam them so that the letters are able to be opened. They take the letters out and then they seal the envelopes back up and put them back in where he had them. That way he doesn't realize that they were taken. And in the film that doesn't happen. They just take the letters and he doesn't realize that they were taken. And in the film that doesn't happen. They just take the letters and he doesn't realize they were taken.
Speaker 1:Suge is a blues singer, so she does leave at several points throughout the book, but she always comes back. And she always comes back specifically for Celie. But one of the times she comes back she has another partner called Grady and it is during one of these visits that she tells Mister, I'm taking Celie back with me to Memphis and she's going to live with me in Memphis, and Mister's like you're not going to take Celie from me. And Suge's like yeah, I am, and you can't stop me. And of course you can't stop her. So Memphis Celie goes to Memphis with Suge and Grady, but they do stay for longer periods of time in the book. They do stay for a longer period of time in the book than they do in the musical. This is actually the point in the book. So the first time that Suge is there with them and Celie has an extra back to health. They start getting close to each other. They start forming a bond.
Speaker 1:It is at some point during this initial state that Shug teaches Celie how to pleasure herself. Celie doesn't like anything remotely sexual because she's never, it's always. Just there's nothing enjoyable about it to her. So Shug teaches her that sex can be pleasurable and that she can pleasure herself, that she doesn't need anyone else in order to do that. This is like after she leaves and she comes back with Grady. It is at this point that Celie and Shug actually start a relationship and they start sleeping with each other, which does not happen in the musical At this point. Actually, I don't remember if they've kissed at this point. They do end up kissing in the musical and it happens after Suge takes Celie to the movies and they're watching the movie and they end up kissing in the balcony of the theater. But I don't remember if this is once they're in Memphis or if this is while they're still in Georgia. But they don't actually have a sexual relationship with each other in the musical, which I think makes sense just because a musical is meant to be on stage and there have been in recent years sex scenes staged for theater.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of on the fence on whether they work or not. Nudity wise, that I mean, it's so easy to incorporate the nudity on stage. But to film, I mean to stage a sex scene, I don't know. I'm still kind of on the fence on whether that can successfully be done. Obviously it can be done and it has been done, but I guess the ones I've seen, they were not done very well, which is what puts me on the fence about it. But anyway, and especially when this particular I think this musical first premiered on Broadway in 2005, thereabouts, yeah, I don't think. I think, like I don't know, that there is any attempt to make sexual content staged on stage. But anyway, not the point. All I'm saying is I understand why there wasn't actual like sex scenes in the musical adaptation, just thinking about the medium.
Speaker 1:So before Celie goes to Memphis, she does curse Mister for the horrible ways that he's treated her through the years and for keeping Nettie's letters from her. So she curses Mister and says everything that you Basically like any crops, anything that he tries to grow, are going to fail. So, yeah, so this is a very literal curse that happens in the musical but doesn't happen in the book. Celie does have some choice words for Mr. But yeah, it's very literal, like after she curses Mr, all his crops fail and he just he starts losing money because he, all his stuff is failing, he can't grow stuff anymore and he knows that he has to find a way to make amends so that Celie can lift her curse from him.
Speaker 1:I will say that in additionally, like as soon as Celie in in the musical, as soon as Celie gets to Memphis, it seems like not much time passes before Celie inherits her father's general store. She does. She does inherit the inherit the store and all his land in the book, but she does live with Suge for a longer period of time than she does. Excuse Voldemort, are you done? Can I continue? Thank you. So Celie does inherit her father's store and his land in the book, but she lives with Shug in Memphis for a lot longer than in the musical.
Speaker 1:Now I will say the book and the musical span about 30 years and the letters that Celie writes aren't dated or anything like that. So you don't really know exactly how much time has passed. Like she 'll just casually mention, or at one point we switch to, we read the letters Nettie has written to Celie. So either Celie or Nettie will say something and it's like, oh, wow, like all that time has passed, but it's never. It's never like explicitly said, like 30 years time frame.
Speaker 1:I think the musical definitely makes it a lot more clear because we see young Celie in early in the early 1900s Wow, that felt weird to say. But literally like the early 1900s, like 1900 through 1910, somewhere in that time period Celie, we see Celie as a young girl and then by the time the or I guess it's more of like the 1910 to 1920 range, because by the time the film ends it's past World War II. So the film does make the musical, does make it like the passage of time more clear. But, that being said, there are certain times in which I was it seemed like, like I said, it seems like she lives with Suge for a lot longer in the book than she actually ended up living with Suge in the musical.
Speaker 1:But she does end up inheriting her father's store and his land and she ends up finding out the truth about their father from Nettie. In the musical she finds out by a different matter, but in the letters that Nettie writes to Celie, nettie reveals that the man who they thought is their father is actually not their father and Nettie ends up finding out this information because she, after Mr, kicks her out, she gets hired by the pastor and his wife and they're the ones who adopted Celie's children, and so yeah. So Celie ends up finding out through Nettie and Nettie finds out through the pastor and his wife. So yeah, in the musical Nettie does receive Celie's letters, but in the book Nettie never gets a chance. Like Celie does start writing back to Nettie as soon as she finds out that Nettie is alive and she reads Nettie's letters and she starts writing back to Nettie and she mails them out to her, but Nettie never receives these letters. In the book Celie ends up getting them all back in a pile from the post office after she finds out that the ship Nettie was on. So Nettie and the pastor and the pastor's wife and Celie's children go to Africa on a missionary trip and as they're returning from Africa back to the United States, it is believed that the ship that they are on was targeted by again, this is during World War II. So it was targeted by an enemy submarine or just some sort of naval battle and the ship they were on was sunk as part of that battle. So, yeah, so Nettie never gets any of Celie's letters.
Speaker 1:So in the musical, as I said, mr's crops fail, he has no income coming in because all his crops failed and he's like I need to make amends so that Celie will lift her curse off of me and I can go back to growing, I can go back to make a living. At some point he finds out that Nettie and the pastor, the pastor's wife and Celie's children are stuck in Africa. They don't have money or papers to get back to the States. So, mister's like I'm gonna buy their passage back, I'm gonna make sure that they're able to get back to the States and reunite her and Celie and that's how Celie will lift the curse off of me. This doesn't happen in the book. As I said, in the book Celie thinks that Nettie has died on her way back to the United States.
Speaker 1:The musical also includes an entire different subplot that is not found in the book. Again, the book is told exclusively through Celie and then at some points Nettie's points of view, through byways of their letters. So if Celie doesn't personally experience it, she doesn't know. This is what's going on. So she doesn't talk about Shug outside of the bond that they have with each other, and so the subplot that isn't in the book involves Shug's father. Shug's father is a different pastor of another church and he and his wife don't approve of the life that Shug is living, and so they've essentially excommunicated her, and so there's like a whole plot where she's trying subplot, where she's trying to form that bond with her parents again, and then in at the end of the musical, netty and sealy and sealy's children are all reunited and adam, who is sealy's son, comes home from africa with a, with an african wife named abina does happen in the book, but the wife's name is Tashi. And yeah, that's the musical versus the book.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I was more like I said, it's just so much, so many things that are different and, timeline wise, like I could definitely see the 30 year time span a lot more clearly in the musical, but it still seemed like all the events happened a lot sooner than they happen in the book. But, that being said, there were some changes that I really, really liked, and one of them being how much more focused the musical is on the bonds of sisterhood, the bonds of sisterhood that Celie has not only with Nettie, but obviously that bond of sisterhood, the bonds of sisterhood that Celie has not only with Nettie, but obviously that bond of sisterhood is broken for a period of time because they're not in communication with each other, not by choice. But she forms this beautiful bond with Shug and with Sophia and that's not really in the book. There is that bond between her and Shug in the book, but that bond isn't necessarily that strong of a bond isn't there in the bond between her and Suge in the book, but that bond isn't necessarily that strong of a bond isn't there in the book between her and Sophia.
Speaker 1:I also love how the musical numbers were staged. They were visually so exciting. The dancing, the choreography, the cinematography, combined with just all the elements during the musical numbers, were so fun. They were so much fun and just visually exciting to look at. And, yeah, just, I think my favorite I don't know the name, I don't remember the names of the numbers, but like my first, I think my favorite one, though there were a lot of good ones I think my favorite one is the song that comes after she sees Olivia for the first time and there's like, yeah, I don't know, it was just really, really visually beautiful. I really liked looking at that.
Speaker 1:One thing I will say one big, big complaint is that before I saw this film I heard so many people saying like, unlike the original Color Purple, like this one really leans into Shug and Celie's lesbian relationship. Like the first one kind of shied away from it, but this one actually really leaned into it. And I just want to say no, we got one kiss between the two of them and that was it. Shug didn't teach Celie how to pleasure herself. We didn't really see any sexual content between the two of them beyond that one kiss. I mean, how bad is the original? If people are saying this one really leaned into it and it didn't, I don't know. But yeah, that was kind of disappointing. But otherwise, yeah, I really really enjoyed it and this is one of the few books and adaptation wink wink that I would love to bring to a future episode the book with the original adaptation and the musical for something I have I'm working on down the pipeline with a friend of mine, so we'll see if that happens. But yeah, let's go ahead and get into the ratings. So I rated the book four stars.
Speaker 1:I, as I said, this is my third time reading it and I think every time I read it I find something new to discover. And, oh my gosh, no, I didn't. I didn't talk about a major, major change. How could I not talk about it? So yeah, in in the end, when as I, when I was talking about Nettie and everything I did say that the musical says Nettie and the pastor and the pastor's wife and her children Although it might have just been Nettie and the children that showed up. But the point is, nettie is not married to the pastor, nettie does. The pastor's wife ends up dying while they're in Africa and he and Nettie end up falling in love and getting married. So that happens in the book, but not in the musical, at least not that I saw. I'm pretty sure his wife was still there and if she wasn't there, nettie was just there with the children. But anyway, now let's get into the ratings.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, this is my third time reading the book and I just feel like there's something every single time I read it. There's just something that, something new I discover about Celie and about her relationship with the other women in the book, and it's just really, it's just a really beautiful thing to to read about. And, yeah, I think every every time I read it. There's something, there's something new that I that I enjoy. I really enjoyed the musical as well, but and, like I said, the biggest. The thing I loved most about it is the sense of sisterhood that Celie gets from Shug and Sophia and Fantasia Barino, danielle Brooks and Taraji P Henson were all I mean. We're not surprised by Taraji. I'd never seen Fantasia Barino or Danielle Brooks act. I've heard good things about Danielle Brooks. She was also on the in the Broadway revival with Cynthia Erivo. I knew Fantasia Barrino acted, but I had never seen much or heard much about her as an actor. I knew she was a fantastic singer, but the three of them were just so great and I definitely have to shout out Coleman Domingo as Mister as well.
Speaker 1:Like he, mister does get kind of a redemption arc in the book as well. Celie learns to stand up for herself thanks to Shug, and they, she and Mister, end up becoming friends. He wants to does invite her to stay married to him. It's just to come love with love with him again as his wife. And she says no, like I don't. We don't love each other like that. And why should we live like that if that's not what either one of us wants with each other, so they do end up becoming friends. So he does get this redemption arc and yeah, there's just this. And Coleman Domingo oh my gosh, like he's so terrifying. But when he get like, yeah, he's also, he's also incredible. Yeah, he played Mister, with like the right amount of terror and intimidation and a hint of good hiding deep, deep down within.
Speaker 1:But anyway, I rated the book four stars and I rated the film three and a half stars. So I have a point the winner is the book. Yes, I don't think this could have gone any other way. I'm just so much more familiar and maybe that's cheating, but I'm just so much more familiar with the book and it's it's come to mean a lot to me through the years and I really enjoy rereading it each and every single time. And, yeah, this is definitely one I wouldn't mind rereading in the future and maybe, if the Color Purple, the original film, is available for streaming at some point, bringing it back.
Speaker 1:But that is it for this episode of Books vs Movies. Next week, I will be talking about Farewell my Queen by Chantal Thomas and its 2012 adaptation, farewell my Queen, starring Lea Seydoux and Diane Kruger. If you really enjoyed this podcast. Please leave it a five-star rating and a review and tell all your friends about it, so that the word can continue to spread about this little passion project of mine. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week. Bye.