It’s now been 40 years since The Color Purple (1985) premiered. Forty years, which is both a considerable stretch of time—an epoch in the context of a film’s cultural shelf life—and yet, in another sense, a mere blink in the larger scope of the history it encapsulates. This anniversary isn’t just a reason for sentimental reflection or rote celebration of a milestone. It demands, I think, a deeper reckoning with what the film really signifies—what it means to us, as individuals and as a culture, four decades later. The Color Purple, in this regard, becomes both a historical marker and a living organism, its meaning shifting depending on when and how you engage with it. It’s a film that, through its sharpness, its raw emotionality, and its searing depiction of violence, survival, and hope, constantly invites re-interpretation—and, as we sit at the crossroads of its 40th anniversary, that re-engagement feels especially necessary. The question we must ask is: What do we do with this film now? What, in the context of 2025, does The Color Purple ask of us—and can we even see it for what it really is anymore, unclouded by the sentiments and expectations of those 40 years?
The film opens with the grand, panoramic expanse of the American South, sweeping and purple-toned. And yet, if you’re watching it in 2025, what strikes you now isn’t just the visual beauty of the landscape—its composition, the light flickering over the cotton fields, the trees in the distance, the blueness of the sky—it’s the impossibility of the setting’s purity. This is a movie that’s constantly working against idealization, even in its visual style. The scene is not some pastoral refuge, where characters could simply escape into the landscape and let their troubles dissipate like morning fog. Instead, it’s a vast and ominous tableau—a beauty suffused with the dark knowledge of what’s taken place here, and continues to.
This is the crux of The Color Purple’s strange, elusive genius—its ability to hold the tensions of trauma and survival, to allow those two opposing forces to breathe in the same space. Spielberg, aided by the meticulous work of cinematographer Allen Daviau, understands the painful truth that this is a film where the beautiful and the painful must coexist. To treat one without the other would be dishonest to the history it tries to confront. This constant push and pull isn’t just aesthetic; it’s a symbolic framework. It’s about recognizing that beauty, even in its fullness, doesn’t absolve the ugliness it exists alongside. This tension runs throughout the narrative, as it runs through Celie’s life.
At the heart of The Color Purple is Celie (played with devastating vulnerability by Whoopi Goldberg), whose story is one of nearly unimaginable suffering. In 2025, you have to ask, has her struggle become so iconic, so synonymous with victimhood, that we’ve forgotten how complicated it actually is? The way we talk about The Color Purple now—post-MeToo, post-Black Lives Matter, post-#OscarsSoWhite, post-everything—often flattens Celie’s journey into a neat narrative of liberation. That’s the story that mainstream culture—and, I hate to say it, even the mainstream critical conversation—likes to tell: the heroic, redemptive narrative of Celie’s journey from brokenness to wholeness. But this glosses over the film’s true complexity. It flattens a deeply difficult and complex transformation into something more palatable, more easily digested.
Goldberg doesn’t give us an easy “arc” of liberation. Celie’s liberation isn’t a triumphant, clean-cut journey; it’s jagged and fraught with emotional and psychological complexity. Goldberg’s performance never lets us forget that Celie’s healing is both deeply personal and difficult. Every glance, every pause in her speech feels significant. It’s in her physicality—the way she shrinks when she enters a room, how she sits, how she stands, how she lets herself be touched—that we understand the enormity of her internal struggle. The way Goldberg conveys a woman who is not just a victim but a human being undergoing the slow, painful process of becoming herself. It’s an unspoken intimacy between actress and audience that elevates Celie’s journey from melodramatic trope to something much deeper and more heartbreaking. As the years go by, the impact of Goldberg’s performance becomes even more pronounced. She imbues Celie with a depth of vulnerability and resilience that continues to resonate—particularly in a world where, despite all the progress we’ve made, many of Celie’s struggles still echo. Goldberg doesn’t just play a character; she inhabits the struggle of generations of Black women silenced by both gender and racial oppression. She makes Celie’s pain real, and she makes her triumph not a fairy tale but a hard-won, deeply earned catharsis.
Spielberg and, crucially, Alice Walker in her novel, resist turning Celie into a “saint” or a mere figure of “strength.” That’s the thing about trauma—it doesn’t produce saints. It produces people. Human beings who, when offered a hand to hold, might turn it away; people who, after enduring a lifetime of horror, might still doubt their own worth. Celie’s journey, particularly in the context of the film’s pacing, is an unrelenting one—not toward some perfected self but toward a rawness, an authenticity, a reclamation of what was stolen from her. But Wallace would argue that her real victory is not simply her final independence, not her “freedom” in the strictest sense. It’s the fact that she learns how to live within this freedom, which isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Sofia, played with fierce energy by Oprah Winfrey, is a character who, though she doesn’t have as much screen time, is crucial to the thematic structure of the film. Sofia represents a kind of refusal to bow down, to accept the oppression that Celie endures without resistance. She’s loud, she’s brash, and she pays a high price for her defiance, but Sofia’s unyielding spirit is a critical counterpoint to Celie’s more passive nature, and Winfrey’s performance radiates that struggle.
Margaret Avery’s Shug Avery is, without a doubt, one of the most captivating figures in the film—a whirlwind of sex, defiance, and self-possession. Shug enters Celie’s life like a breath of air, a force of nature that cannot be controlled. Shug is not a savior in the traditional sense. She is not here to rescue Celie, but to disrupt her. The role Shug plays is less about helping Celie find herself than about showing her a version of womanhood that is unapologetically autonomous, sexually liberated, and full of raw, chaotic energy. In a typical narrative, Shug might be seen as the "free spirit" who helps the “broken” protagonist heal—but that would be a reductive reading. Shug doesn’t heal Celie so much as she exposes Celie to a world of possibilities that Celie has been denied. Avery imbues Shug with a raw sensuality, but it’s a sensuality that comes with both freedom and danger. Shug’s independence—her lack of adherence to the roles prescribed to women in that world—scares Celie at first. And yet, it’s Shug who awakens Celie’s ability to love herself, and in that, Shug’s impact is truly radical. However, Shug is not some idealized role model. She’s flawed, she’s often selfish, and at times, she leaves Celie emotionally adrift. Yet, in her messiness, she reveals the ways in which self-discovery is rarely clean or comfortable. Shug’s character forces us to confront the idea that liberation, for women like Celie, is not a smooth transition from oppression to joy. It’s a turbulent, sometimes selfish, and often painful process that can’t be simplified into a feel-good narrative.
Shug is such a potent and unapologetic disruptor of all the things Celie has been told are true about herself: that she is weak, that she is unworthy of love, that she has no right to her own desires, her own needs, her own voice. But Shug is also problematic in many ways. She comes and goes like a storm, leaving Celie behind in the aftermath, still figuring out the emotional wreckage. There’s something profoundly unsettling about Shug’s influence—yes, it awakens Celie, but it also complicates everything in ways that can’t be neatly resolved. Shug, in her refusal to be contained by any one role—whether lover, mentor, or friend—embodies the fluid, unpredictable nature of identity itself.
Danny Glover, whose performance as Albert—referred to as “Mister” in the film—adds a complex layer of darkness to The Color Purple. It’s easy, on a surface level, to view Mister as a one-dimensional villain—he is abusive, cruel, misogynistic, and at times seemingly irredeemable. But Glover’s portrayal is far more nuanced. Mister’s journey in the film is one of both villainy and, albeit reluctantly, redemption. It’s telling that Glover never plays Mister as merely an outwardly evil man. Instead, we see the layers of fear, control, and repressed love that shape his cruelty. Glover’s voice, the way he delivers lines with tension coiled tightly under every word, makes Mister feel like a man teetering on the edge of his own unresolved trauma. The very control he exercises over Celie is a response to his own insecurities, his fears of inadequacy, and the rigidity of a society that has taught him to dominate and suppress. The depth of Glover’s portrayal—the way Glover never lets us forget that Mister is a product of the same systems that oppress Celie. He’s both victim and victimizer, which is what makes his eventual transformation, however gradual and uncertain, so painfully human.
One of the remarkable aspects of The Color Purple is its ensemble cast, which offers a gallery of complex secondary characters who shape Celie’s journey. Particularly notable is the relationship between Celie and her sister Nettie (played by Akosua Busia), whose separation at the beginning of the film sets the emotional tone for much of the story. Nettie represents both a mirror image of Celie—her younger, more independent counterpart—and the hope that Celie holds onto throughout her years of suffering. Nettie’s letters to Celie, which we hear as voiceovers throughout the film, are a key narrative device that not only drive the plot forward but also highlight Celie’s profound isolation and yearning for connection. Busia’s performance is crucial to making Nettie both a tangible presence and an emotional tether for Celie, reminding us of the family and love that Celie has lost but not forgotten.
As we reflect on The Color Purple’s 40th anniversary, it becomes clear that the film’s lasting relevance isn’t merely in its historical context, but in how it continues to challenge us today. While its story of pain, survival, and self-discovery will always be rooted in a specific time and place, its themes transcend generations. The raw complexity of Celie’s journey, alongside the struggles of characters like Shug, Sofia, and Mister, calls us to re-examine not only the history of oppression but the ongoing process of healing, identity, and resistance. The film resists offering simple answers to complicated questions, encouraging viewers to confront the messiness of life and the imperfection of liberation. It’s a film that refuses to be neatly categorized, much like the characters it portrays. As we move further into 2025, The Color Purple remains an invitation to dig deeper into our shared past, to acknowledge the pain and beauty that coexist in the fight for justice and self-empowerment, and to continue questioning how far we’ve come—and how far we still have to go.
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