The musical coming-of-age period drama, “The Color Purple,” is about a significant journey and is, in itself, a significant journey for the producers, the director and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that became a Broadway musical and now, in 2023, a big budget film with named stars from both Broadway and the silver screen.

That wasn’t necessarily true for the 1985 film which starred a virtual unknown Whoopi Goldberg and earned Oscar nominations for Oprah Winfrey as Sofia before she became a national talk show host and Margaret Avery as Shug Avery. Winfrey was one of the producers of the Broadway musical and this film.

On Broadway in 2005, the original production garnered 11 Tony Award nominations. American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino took on the role of Celie from April 2007 until 2008 and was also part of the National tour. The Broadway revival in 2015 won two 2016 Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. Cynthia Erivo was the Broadway revival’s Celie, with Jennifer Hudson as Shug Avery. Danielle Brooks played Sofia. The movie isn’t a complete copy of the musical.

The film begins and ends in the large branches of an old majestic tree. Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as the young Celie) is playing a hand clapping game with her younger sister Nettie (Halle Bailey as a young Nettie). The year is 1909 and Celie is obviously pregnant, but this isn’t her first child. The first was given away by her father and this one will be given away as well. This baby will be a son and her father will give the child away, but Celie asks God for a sign (“Somebody Gonna Love You”).

Celie will be given to the widower Albert “Mister” Johnson (Colman Domingo) by her father even though Mister initially wanted the younger Nettie. The girls promise to keep in touch and Celie finds that Mister is neither kind nor his children well-behaved. But with Celie gone, Nettie becomes the object of their father’s lecherous attentions. Desperate, Nettie comes to Mister’s house and Mister agrees to allow Nettie to stay. Yet Mister, like their father, believes that he deserves sexual compliance from Nettie. When Nettie refuses, Mister drives Nettie away. Although Nettie promises to write, Celie isn’t allowed to get the mail.

Time passes and now Celie is played by Fantasia Barrino. Mister’s only son, Harpo (Corey Hawkins), brings home a strong-willed woman, Sofia (Danielle Brooks),  in 1920. Mister is against the marriage but Harpo and Sofia do marry. Yet Harpo wants to dominate his wife, but when he hits Sofia, she hits back.  She eventually leaves him.

Later, Harpo takes up with the meeker Squeak (H.E.R.), and turns his house into a juke joint. He hopes to feature his father’s mistress, Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). When Shug arrives, rather than making life for Celie more miserable, eventually helps Celie change her life for the better.

This is only director Bazawule’s third feature film. His first,  “The Burial of Kojo,” was about a man left to die in an abandoned gold mine and his daughter’s attempts to save him. That film won Best First Feature Film by a Director at the 2019 Africa Movie Academy Awards and was short listed for Best Foreign language Film for the 2020 Golden Globe Awards. His second feature film  “Black Is King” was co-directed by Beyoncé (and six others) and told the story of a young African prince who was exiled after his father’s death and his journey to reclaim his throne. That film was nominated for an NAACP Image Awards, a Best Music Film Grammy and for Outstanding Television Documentary or Special at the Black Reel Awards.

While director Blitz Bazawule does a competent job with the transitions and the tone, sometimes the camera angles and lighting are not the best, particularly for a musical production. The script doesn’t follow the stage musical. Songs from the stage musical have been cut, including “Somebody Gonna Love You,” “Our Prayer,” “Big Dog,” “Dear God – Sofia,” “Brown Betty,” “Uh-Oh,” “African Homeland,” “Celie’s Curse,” “Any Little Thing,” “What About Love (Reprise),” “That Fine Mister,” “A Tree Named Sofia,” and “All We Got to Say.” However, a song that had been cut from the stage production (“She Be Mine”) has been included.

Other songs not in the Broadway production were also added. The songwriting duo Nova Wav (Denisia Andrews and Brittany Coney)  wrote and composed the original song “Keep It Movin”, with Morten Ristorp and Halle Bailey. Bailey with and Phylicia Pearl Mpas perform it. Alicia Keys wrote and performs, “Lifeline,”  the second original song from the film.

The casting provides less of a physical contrast between Barrino’s Celie and Henson’s Shug than the original film. Henson is a much more commanding presence than Margaret Avery’s Shug in the 1985 film. Moreover, Margaret Avery also didn’t do her own vocals (singing voice by Táta Vega) while Henson does her own singing.

Domingo’s Mister is not simplistically a bad and brutal man. Domingo gives him nuance enough for a musical. Louis Gossett Jr, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1983 for “An Office and a Gentleman” plays Mister’s father with a sense of withered pride and self-righteous dignity.

This is a lovely movie musical with many good performances, yet this is a woman’s story being told by a male director and a male screenwriter.  I wonder how a female director and writer might tell both the musical and the non-musical versions of Alice Walker’s story. This version of “The Color Purple” is not a perfect production but it is a powerful one.