The day after I saw the new musical film “The Color Purple,” I watched the 1985 coming-of-age period drama. Because of the passage of time, it definitely hit me differently and is well worth watching again before the opening of the 2023 musical version.

Based on the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker novel of the same name, the 1985 version of the film was directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Menno Meyjes. Prior to this, the Dutch-born Meyjes had only written a 1985 teleplay for the TV series “Amazing Stories” and Spielberg had been one of the creators of the series that ran from 1985-1987 and directed two episodes, including the episode (“The Mission”) that Meyjes wrote. Spielberg, Joshua Brand and John Falsey are credited with the development of the story while Spielberg is credited with the story and the lead actor was Kevin Costner.

In this decade, people might be more familiar with Whoopi Goldberg as a co-hot on “The View” or the Guilan character from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a role she reprised on “Star Trek: Picard.” Oprah Winfrey is also recognized for her talk show days. “The Oprah Winfrey” show ran from 1986 to 2011. Winfrey had taken over the program in 1984, but with the success of “The Color Purple,” the show was relaunched and renamed to reflect Winfrey’s growing fame.

The beginning catches you by surprise. Two young teenage sisters are playing in a field of shoulder-high purplish pink cosmos wildflowers in rural Hartwell, Georgia. When they leave the field of flowers, the audience realizes that the older one, Celie (played by Desreta Jackson), is heavily pregnant. Her sister, Nettie (Akosuo Busia) is as dark as her, but more slender. This is Celie’s second child and Nettie will help deliver it. Soon after she names the child Adam, her father (Leonard Jackson), who is also the father of the child, gives the baby away.

When a widower with three kids, Albert “Mister” Johnson (Danny Glover),  comes to court Nettie, their father gives him Celie instead. From the start, the wild kids are unpleasant and even violent. Mister’s son Harpo (Howard Starr), throws a rock that strikes Celie on the head, causing her to bleed and leave a bloody handprint on a rock in the front hard. The house is a shamble of clutter and food half-eaten and left for animals to snack on.  Celie finds that her new husband who she addresses as “Mister,” is no better than her father, raping her at night and beating her when she angers him.

With Celie gone, Nettie becomes the new target of their father’s incestuous advances. Fleeing to Mister’s house, Nettie is temporarily reunited with Celie, but it doesn’t take long for Mister to begin his sexual harassment. Angered by Nettie fighting back, he kicks her out of the house and although Nettie promises to stay in contact, Mister declares he won’t permit it.

Years pass and the kids grow up. By 1916, Harpo has become involved with a large and loud woman named Sofia (Oprah Winfrey). She’s already pregnant and Mister disapproves of the match. The two still marry but the marriage is marred by domestic violence and even Celie encourages Harpo to beat her. Sofia confronts Celie and remains determined to fight back. Eventually, she decides to leave Harpo taking their children with her.

Celie has always lived in the Mister’s house under the shadow of a beautiful woman she has never met, Shug Avery (Margaret Avery but singing voice by Táta Vega), a traveling singer who is originally from this small town, the daughter of the Black preacher. Mister keeps a photo of Shug on his nightstand. Mister believes he should have married her, but his father Ol’ Mister (Broadway actor Adolph Caesar) disapproved, not that Ol’ Mister is particularly fond of Celie.

Shug has been Mister’s mistress and born illegitimate children which Mister is sure are his, but Ol’ Mister isn’t so sure. Celie only meets Shug when Mister and Harpo bring her to the house, sick and in need of care. Mister attempts to tend to her, but the breakfast he makes up is burnt and thrown out by an angry Shug. Celie makes a hearty meal and wins the approval of Shug. Nursing Shug back to health, Celie finds a friend and perhaps something more. (The lesbianism is downplayed here.)  When Harpo convinces Shug to perform at his newly opened juke joint that he runs with his girlfriend Squeak, during the performance Shug notices that Celie is being snubbed by the other Black women and decides to dedicate a song to her.

While Shug’s performance at the juke joint is a hit, Sofia and her new man show up. Sofia and Harpo dance and, when Squeak sees this and objects, a fight breaks out. Celie and Shug sneak out and become closer. Shug admits to Celie she’ll be hitting the road and Celie confides that Mister beats her. Through Shug, Celie learns that other people can find her beautiful and although they share a kiss, when Shug leaves, Celie is left behind.

Up to this point, we haven’t seen much interaction with White people, but Sofia ends up in town and his harassed by the mayor’s wife, Miss Millie (Dana Ivey), who is taken by how clean Sofia’s children are. Miss Millie offers what she believes is an offer no Black woman would turn down: a chance to be her maid. Sofia refuses. When the mayor intervenes, the mayor becomes so angry he hits Sofia and Sofia hits him back. In that time period in Georgia, that was almost unthinkable. She is beaten by White men, jailed and sentences to eight years in prison and then is released only to be forced to become Miss Millie’s maid. Throughout this, Celie visits Sofia and attempts to bring her hope.

Shug breezes back into the life of Celie and Mister, but this time she is, much to the disappointment of both, married. Mister eventually accepts this while getting drunk with the husband, but during their drunken stupor, Shug goes down to get the mail and secretly gives a letter from Nettie to Celie. The two discover that Mister has been hiding Nettie’s letters and Celie begins to read Nettie’s letters.

At a family dinner that includes Sofia and Squeak, Celie decides that she is leaving with Shug and Shug’s new husband. Seeing Celie finally speak up for herself, the spark returns to Sofia. Celie leaves giving a curse to Mister: Until he does right by her, all that he has and all that he does will be doomed to failure. When Celie and Nettie’s father dies, Celie learns through Nettie that he was only their stepfather. Through his new wife, Celie learns the house and shop had been owned by their real father and the rightful inheritance of Celie and Nettie. Celie realizes that her parents did love her and goes on to use the shop to build will a successful business of her own as a tailor for clothes.

Mister is redeemed by helping Nettie reunite with Celie and Nettie, who had been part of a Christian missionary in Africa with the Black couple who adopted both of Celie’s children, and Celie is finally reunited with her children.

The 18 December 1985 premiere in Los Angeles was picketed by the NAACP because rape was depicted here. This is perhaps still the most disturbing part of the film. Although Spielberg downplays the violence and there is no graphic depiction of the raping by her stepfather and her husband, there is also no depiction of disapproval by the Black community.

Of course, there was criticism about the choice of a non-Black director, but Spielberg would go on to direct “Amistaud” in 1997. As one might expect from a Spielberg film, “The Color Purple” is visually stunning and on the sentimental side. The poverty depicted in the novel doesn’t seem quite so bad in this beautiful film.

Goldberg’s portrayal of Celie is luminous. When she finally smiles under the loving encouragement of Shug Avery, you feel as if a small miracle has happened. While Margaret Avery is pretty, she’s not a singer and one almost wishes that they had given Patti LaBelle a chance. Avery is more in line with conventional ideas of beauty which will contrast with the 2023 version of Shug Avery. Winfrey as Sofia is both a hero lost and a hero reborn. Through Winfrey’s Sofia, we witness the tyranny of well-meaning White people, where good acts of charity are really a form of harassment, oppression and enslavement. Through Harpo, and the legacy left him by his grandfather and father, we see that the cycle of domestic violence can be broken. Despite the depiction of Mister as the main antagonist, Glover manages to give him a humanity, a softness and sorrow for a life gone down the wrong path, leaving him alone and broken.

Compared to the musical version of “The Color Purple,” the 1985 version is more visually stunning. Both venture into the horrors of Celie’s life under sexual abuse and domestic violence with a light touch, but that’s more amenable to the musical format. While some may argue that the director should have been a Black man, and that was something rectified in the 2023 musical version, perhaps the argument should be, since this is a woman’s story and the important characters are women, the director should be a woman.

For Spielberg, “The Color Purple” followed  his 1984 New Wave Orientialism adventure “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” a sequel to the 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” In 1982, he had directed “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” for Universal Pictures. For “Amistad,”

“The Color Purple” would get 11 Academy Award nominations and take home no statues at all. The film did better at the Golden Globes with five nominations and one win for star Whoopi Goldberg for Best Actress in a Drama. Currently, you can stream “The Color Purple” on Amazon Prime.