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‘The Color Purple’ Illuminates the Power of Daydreaming Amid Trauma

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the film.

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual assault, molestation, and violence.

The musical film version of The Color Purple opened on Christmas Day 2023, earning $18 million during its record-breaking holiday debut and updating the 1985 film with the elevation of expressing the message of love, faith, and empowerment through vivid daydreams.

“I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it” is one of the film’s most memorable lines revealing the title. It is said by homegrown blues singer Shug Avery, played originally by Margaret Avery and recently by Taraji P. Henson. Purple is the color of royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition. Color psychology tells us the combination of rage red and tranquil blue opens up purple to the interpretation of various emotions. The color purple alone has literary interpretations, especially with purple prose, the literary phrase defined as long-winded, flowery language. Purple prose could be seen as literary fiction, the genre The Color Purple fits into. The novel by Alice Walker earned the renowned author the title of being the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. 

A story full of trauma and triumph, the daydreams in the second film adaptation focus on the power of imagination to lift the main character toward the love she felt was missing throughout her life. 

The song-and-dance routines add the element of hope in early 20th-century Georgia telling the story of Celie, a Black woman whose Pa handed her off to be the wife to a cruel man known as Mister. She is still recovering from the deliberate abduction of her two babies by Pa, who had raped her. And she will miss her sister, Nettie, who’s her confidante and the one who is told she can make a way for herself in the world through her education. Celie is forced to raise Mister’s three children, cook, and clean all day. She goes through this pattern for years until she meets the famous Shug Avery, who forces her to live her life despite her past and present abuses.

The first daydream sequence from Celie’s imagination occurs after a baby girl drops her pacifier on the floor in the family general store. This is before she is sent off to be married to Mister. In the film, this is young Celie, played by newcomer Phylicia Pearl Mpasi. As Celie sweeps the floor, she picks up the pacifier in awe of the baby girl. She believes it is Olivia, the daughter Pa fathered and abducted. Since Pa tells Celie that he gave the babies to God, Celie fears her babies could be dead. Olivia is riding in the stroller handled by a woman Celie doesn’t know. To keep the moment to herself, Celie runs outside the store with the broom and imagines herself in a dark dream sequence. She is singing “She Be Mine” with the ensemble of men singing and dancing beside her in prisoners’ jumpsuits in a field, where they have rakes, similar to her broom. The setting is charcoal gray; no celebration for color. Then, the dance routine morphs into washerwomen under a waterfall as Celie raises her arms skyward. Her dream sequence is interrupted by Pa, played by Deon Cole, with the threat of punishment. Before she hurries back into the store, we see Celie hold the delicate pacifier close to her chest. 

The next daydream sequence is with Celie and her sister, Nettie, played by Halle Bailey, who also starred in the book-to-film blockbuster The Little Mermaid earlier in 2023. Celie has already been married off to Mister. Nettie asks to stay with Celie in Mister’s house to escape Pa’s sexual violence. While looking for wood, the two sisters are walking under the trees on a dusty road, but the sunlight shines on Nettie as she begins to belt out “Keep It Movin’.” Nettie has the opportunity to be optimistic since she’s the sister who can earn an education and understands her future is brighter with her education. She mentions Africa as the birthplace of their ancestors and wants to journey there someday. In fear of Mister’s wrath, Celie becomes anxious, wanting to hurry to get the wood before the sun sets. Celie doesn’t understand that her world could open so wide since she doesn’t attend school and has already birthed two children who had been taken away. The joyful day disappears when Nettie has to escape Mister’s sexual violence and is thrown out of the home in the middle of the night. When Mister brings out his shotgun, Nettie flees into the darkness. Celie is alone again. 

Years later as an adult, Celie is played by American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. She is in a constant rotation of cooking and cleaning Mister’s home without much attention from him. If he gives her attention, it is usually a violent interaction. So, Celie seems to have a short-circuited imagination. The photo of Shug Avery comes alive for Celie as she notices this glamorous woman. We’re taken back for a few seconds to the moment of Shug’s photo shoot. Shug Avery is also the love of Mister’s life. Celie could only wonder what the woman is like, but her imagining how the photo is produced is a daydream sequence that fails to feature Celie herself. 

When Shug finally comes to visit Mister, Celie has the chance to experience the glamour up close. Shug takes a relaxing bath with her record playing in the background. Shug needs somebody to flip the record, so Celie enters the bathroom quietly and flips the record since it’s her job to do everything around the house. But she’s in awe of how Shug can lay out her naked body covered in soapy bubbles and enjoy her leisure time. Shug asks Celie to scrub her back. While scrubbing Shug’s back, Celie is transported into another world, but this time it is still charcoal gray to match the gigantic gramophone playing Shug’s record. Celie is singing “Dear God – Shug” about the wondrous feeling she is experiencing in the presence of the great Shug Avery. Then she slides off the bathtub, surprising Shug. The moment is awkwardly over. But her imagination is revving up again. 

During the visit, Celie becomes Shug’s companion as Mister, played by Colman Domingo, continues to tend to the farm and go out drinking. Shug notices Celie never smiles. Celie admits she doesn’t have much to smile about. While applying her iconic red lipstick, Shug tries to guide Celie to joy by having her wear lipstick. Celie’s face brightens up. Feeling pretty boosts her confidence. She tells Shug that Mister has beaten her less during the visit. Shug tells Celie to fight back. Shug even reveals that Celie’s husband’s name is Albert. Mister is a title; Celie didn’t know her husband’s name. 

The newfound hope for a new life forces Celie to daydream more in the beaded dresses and headpieces that Shug wears. Shug performs at Mister’s son Harpo’s converted speakeasy. She arrives on a boat to the speakeasy in her red dress and feathers. The diva’s entrance and performance force Celie to enjoy herself; it has to be the first time she has ever enjoyed a night out. Shug and Celie leave together and later watch a movie at the cinema. They sit high in the auditorium, most likely in the colored section. It looks like nobody else is in the theater. They share a passionate kiss. The passion grows into a daydream sequence of Shug in her gown stepping down on one side of the stage to Celie in her gown sashaying on the other side singing “What About Love?” with a pianist and band playing on stage. They unite in the center. 

As Shug and Celie grow closer and away from an inebriated Albert, Celie believes she’s going with Shug to Memphis. At first, Celie is left behind to combat Albert. Her life of wonder is shut down, and she’s trying to fight back against Albert’s cruelty, thanks to Shug’s advice. But the magic of Shug is gone, and that made the whole world of difference coexisting with Albert in the same house. Shug eventually returns with a new suave husband. A raucous Thanksgiving dinner ensues with Celie cursing out Albert, visibly upset with Shug arriving in town with a husband and saying she will take Celie to Memphis with her this time. Celie jumps up and places a knife under Mister’s chin. Everyone stops Celie from cutting Albert. Harpo’s estranged wife Sofia, played by Danielle Brooks who also starred in the book-to-TV Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, comes alive again with her fighting spirit after spending six years in jail for defending herself against a White mob. Shug and her husband jump in the car to take Celie and Harpo’s girlfriend Mary Agnes “Squeak,” played by H.E.R., to Memphis, but not before Celie points her two fingers like thunderbolts at Mister and says the famous curse: “Until you do right by me, everything you think about is going to crumble.”

On Albert’s farm, the land has been riddled with locusts. The cursed land can’t grow anything, then it catches on fire. Albert barely has anything left, so he decides to make things right with Celie. He sells some of his land to help bring Nettie and the family of missionaries she has worked with for years home to the United States after their passports were destroyed in Africa. He learns of the opportunity to be of assistance through one of Nettie’s letters that he would hide from Celie, who has now already moved out after finding dozens of old letters unearthed by Shug. He surprises Celie at the store and purchases an iridescent pair of pants. Celie packs the pair up, questioning the choice. She feels at ease once he leaves the store. Then she sings, “I’m Here,” the pivotal song of the musical with the message of gratitude for being alive and able to move forward. 

Once in Memphis living in Shug’s mansion, Celie discovers Pa has died. The general store is now hers, though Pa’s widow has to tell Celie that Pa was her stepfather and the store never belonged to Pa, but to Celie’s biological father who had left the business in Celie’s and Nettie’s names. They never knew, but Celie is about to take her sewing to a whole new level. She reopens the general store as a fancy pants store. The daydream sequence stars Celie and her friends, including Shug, Sofia, and Mary Agnes, singing “Miss Celie’s Pants.” Celie was an abused housewife for years, but now she is an entrepreneur using her sewing skills and love of color through fabrics. She chooses pants as a piece of clothing that means empowerment since even then men almost entirely wear pants, but she and her chosen family of women are decked out in fancy pants. 

The film ends with Celie finally being reunited with grownup Nettie, played by Ciara, who had been raising Celie’s children, Olivia and Adam, with their missionary parents in Africa. Celie created her chosen family, even with Mister in his iridescent pants, when her biological family was taken away from her, but they are now all under the willow tree enjoying Easter brunch with her. They hold hands and sing “The Color Purple.”

The musical is being praised for its positivity, but it’s getting criticism for downplaying the trauma. The weight of trauma is showcased in the original film. The balance between the two films is refreshing and gives the audience another way to digest this classic tale. Finding the good in our situations is more of a theme in the present than it was in the 1980s when the book and the original film debuted. The story takes place between the 1910s and 1930s when self-care and self-love were rarely topics being discussed. The self-love message from Shug evolves into sexual love in the story that is not really shown in the 1985 drama because even then queerness was a touchy element to show on camera, especially between two Black women existing in another time in history.

The Color Purple was published in 1982, and two years later with the news of the film from Steven Spielberg, the novel began to see bans in school libraries and literary curricula. The week the new musical version of The Color Purple opened nationwide in theaters, the Orange County Public Schools in Florida banned the novel to comply with House Bill 1069. The bill was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis as an expansion of the “Don’t Say Gay” law, according to Orlando Sentinel. The novel ranked #50 in the 100 most banned books between 2010 and 2019, per the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, which has been documenting attempts to ban books in libraries and schools since 1990. 

Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule directed the new film. He’s also the author of the 2022 novel, The Scent of Burnt Flowers. Whoopi Goldberg, who played Celie in the 1985 film, made a cameo as the midwife who delivers Adam in the beginning of the film, while Oprah Winfrey, who played Sofia, serves as executive producer with Spielberg and Quincy Jones. Both women had earned Academy Award nominations in 1986 for their performances. “A bold new take on the beloved classic” is the slogan for the 2023 film. It was a bold move to update the film and show the banned book in a new light. Perhaps, students who had access to the book taken away from them by their school administrators may read the book on their own after watching the new screen adaptation. After all, the story’s root is about love and how you have to pave your path to feel love.

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film reviews

‘The Perfect Find’ Amplifies the Heart of Tia Williams’ Romance Novel

Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers in "The Perfect Find."
Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers in "The Perfect Find." Image: Alyssa Longchamp/Netflix

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the film on Netflix.

Gabrielle Union, Keith Powers, and Gina Torres add star power to the fashion-centric romantic comedy The Perfect Find based on Tia Williams’ 2016 novel. Though the film follows the storyline on pages, there are still a few touches that brought the so-called unconventional love story to life onscreen. 

Jenna Jones, played by Gabrielle, is an out-of-work fashion editor still recovering from the unraveling of a 10-year relationship with millionaire entrepreneur Brian, played by the debonair D.B. Woodside. In the beginning of the story, we see Jenna floundering at her mother’s house, avoiding New York City like a plague. Her mother, played by Janet Hubert for too short of an appearance, tells Jenna she needs to go back to her life in the city. Her romantic downfall that led to her career derailment has to be on everyone’s mind since it’s still on hers.

In less than five minutes in the film, Jenna returns to her Brooklyn apartment with a chic bob and designer attire in tow. And now that she’s back at home, she needs a night out with the girls, played by Aisha Hinds and Alani “La La” Anthony. They head to a fancy party in Harlem looking for an innocent one-night stand. When Jenna feels like she ran out of luck, she falls tipsily into the arms of a younger man. They kiss, but the kiss is too much for Jenna, who finds the man’s youthful age too ridiculous to take seriously.

Bright and early the next day, she finds herself slightly humiliated in the office of her corporate archnemesis, Darcy Hill, played by Gina. Darcy laughs at the fact that Jenna has to grovel for a job when Jenna allegedly stole her jobs in the past. The competitive world of fashion journalism was a losing game for Darcy until she built her own namesake media empire at Darzine. Jenna earns the job with the expectation to produce multimedia pieces to increase digital subscriptions. Darcy assigns her twenty-something son and photographer Eric to work with Jenna to come up with these pieces. Except Eric happens to be the much-younger man Jenna was kissing the night before. 

Jenna tells Eric that they can’t develop a relationship despite their natural magnetism. They even bond over vintage Black Hollywood films, thanks to the poster of starlet Nina Mae McKinney displayed in Jenna’s office. Eric is Jenna’s boss’ son. The relationship is not only unprofessional but could make Jenna the laughingstock of Black New York again with another misstep in love. When the girls try to hook Jenna up with a blind date, Jenna decides to throw a dinner party to ease the nervousness. She even invites Eric and tells him to bring friends. The more the merrier. At the party, nerves are high as Jenna realizes the blind date is not a match. So, Eric becomes a match with his cuteness and conversation. And a secret relationship between coworkers blossom. 

Intimacy builds between the couple until Darcy warns Jenna to stay away from Eric romantically because she has her suspicions. Jenna disobeys that order while Eric is demanding to emerge as a public boyfriend, and not a private lover. But the volcano of secret love erupts when Darcy catches Jenna consorting inappropriately with her grown son on her cerise velvet sofa. The argument leads to Jenna being fired and Eric being upset about Jenna not telling him that his mother had an instinct about the romance. 

Months pass by. It’s Christmastime. Eric is working on the documentary he always wanted to do on his murdered father Otis. Jenna reaches out to Eric. They arrange to meet at a late-night diner. What Eric believes is a simple catch-up turns out to be a surprise from Jenna with a sonogram. She’s pregnant. Eric being in his early twenties and figuring out his path in cinema make him ask for space. Darcy soon pays a visit to Jenna. Not only did Jenna date Darcy’s son, but she got pregnant by him, too? It’s a lot, but Darcy recalls when she was a first-time mother and vows to support Jenna as a grandmother. 

After accepting paternity, Eric surprises Jenna at a doctor’s appointment. He confesses he still loves Jenna and invites her to the Darzine gala. The film ends with Jenna rubbing her pregnant belly alongside Eric on the red carpet. Their relationship is public, and the family Jenna always wanted is a dream come true. 

The décor and fashion alone are two reasons to put your feet up and sink into the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a glass of wine. Designs meant to leave you awestruck include the first time Jenna meets Darcy at the office. Jenna wears a pink cape by Nina Ricci with Stella McCartney pink silk pants, while Darcy stuns in a multicolored Manish Arora coat. Even author Tia models in the photoshoot as a glam disco geisha queen and on the red carpet in a gold sequin dress. More fashionable cameos include Remy Ma, Winnie Harlow, and Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle’s real-life husband. Jenna’s office is supposed to be a cluttered dump, but in its original iteration we see leopard and zebra print wallpaper, racks full of silky frocks, and fully dressed mannequins sitting on file cabinets. This is just motivation to create a Pinterest board for the jaw-dropping home office. 

“I really wanted to see Gabrielle in a palette that I hadn’t seen her in very much in other films, a more pastel-toned palette,” said director Numa Perrier to Netflix’s blog Tudum. “When it came to Darcy — Gina Torres being such an iconic woman — we wanted to dress her to the nines. We wanted her to just be an absolute New York fashion woman who’s bold and unapologetic and takes up all the space in the room.”

One major plot adjustment is the unplanned pregnancy. In the book, Jenna and Eric don’t see each other until four years after the firing and the breakup. They spot each other at the park as Jenna watches her son Otis play and drinks a latte with Billie, the main character of Tia’s 2004 debut novel The Accidental Diva. Jenna reveals that Otis is Eric’s son and explains she kept her pregnancy a secret because she didn’t want to interfere with Eric’s budding film career. The screenplay written by Spelman College alumna Leigh Davenport, also the creator of Run the World on Starz, features the pregnancy as another plot twist at the end. With Gabrielle’s real-life fertility struggles, the moments feel more heartwarming. 

Another noticeable difference is that Brian is Black in the film while he’s described as a “Jewish Adonis” in the book. And Darzine in the film is StyleZine in the book with that only being one of Darcy’s nine online women’s magazines. The must-see film is a soothing adaptation of a book that was first indie-published by Brown Girls Books and reprinted by Grand Central Publishing after the runaway success of Tia’s third adult novel Seven Days in June. 

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film reviews

‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ Film Makes Character’s Traumas Leap Off the Page

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book and/or watch the film on Netflix.

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual abuse, self-harm, violence, and eating disorders.

Jessica Knoll’s chilling debut novel rocked the best-sellers lists in 2015. Another women’s fiction book about a magazine editor who wants to take on New York City in designer duds, but this version has a twist. Well, several twists that give the borderline unlikeable character a reason for her behavior.

At the time, many readers hated Ani FaNelli, the main character of Luckiest Girl Alive heart-wrenchingly played by Mila Kunis as an adult and Chiara Aurelia as a teenager. Every thought of imperfection runs through Ani’s mind. She is thin because she heads to the gym to ensure every morsel of food is negligible from her dieting and occasional binge eating. She likes BDSM sex; the torture turns her on. She is obsessed with Gucci belts, Rolex watches, and the generational wealth of an engagement ring from her blue-blooded fiancé with a lofty Manhattan business career. She has everything, yet she’s unhappy about everything.

In the film, her thoughts are narrated aloud by Mila. The first three minutes of the film show her holding two knives to consider if they’re worthy to be on her wedding registry. Then we see the blood dripping from the blades. She shakes her head to get rid of the image. Throughout the entire film, it’s difficult to stray your eyes away from the screen because there are numerous visions and flashbacks of the multi-tiered incident that forever wrinkles the threads of Ani’s seemingly perfect life.

Ani is redeemed by the visual representation of her as an adult and as a teenager. Ani used to be TifAni FaNelli, a girl who needed tuition to attend the private Brentley School in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. She makes friends with the outcasts and the popular kids, similar to the comedic classic Mean Girls, but in Luckiest Girl Alive, the friendships feel darker.

One night after a dance, Ani leaves with her popular friends to a house party. She drinks, like all the other kids are drinking. But she blacks out. When she comes to, she can’t move, but a boy is raping her. Then she passes out again. Another boy desecrates her body. She soon finds the strength to get up, but a third boy rapes her anyway. She fights him off to run out of the house and to a gas station where her English teacher takes her to his house so she can avoid her mother.

These events happen in the book. When the book came out, people wondered how the author could come up with such a horrible story that unfortunately happens more in this society than we would like to acknowledge. It took author Jessica Knoll a year to share her story of being raped by three boys at a party as a high school student, as a minor, as a girl.

Nonprofit organizations RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Sandy Hook Promise reviewed the scripts for the sexual assault and gun violence content, and an intimacy coordinator was on set to support the cast and crew, the author told Vanity Fair.

What comes after the rapes in the story is even more violent. Ani’s outcast friends also had their own stories of humiliation executed by the same boys who had raped Ani. They get upset with Ani for not standing up, until they realize they hadn’t stood up for themselves. Without Ani’s knowledge, they bomb the cafeteria at lunchtime and start shooting select kids. This takes place in 1999, the same year the country was horrified to see the mass school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Ani fends for herself going through the school looking for her popular friends who are being targeted. Her friend armed with a rifle hands her the weapon to shoot the boy who had raped her when she was conscious. Dean, played by Carson MacCormac as a teen and Alex Barone as an adult, is crying for his life. Ani can’t do it. Arthur, played by Thomas Barbusca, kept pushing her to fight back, stop protecting her rapists. He shoots Dean at the waist. Ani stabs Arthur to death. She wanted to stop the control of being told what she should do about her trauma and stop the bloodshed triggered by her trauma.

When the public memorials begin, Ani is turned away with her mother, played by Connie Britton, because she was accused of having relationships with Dean and two of the boys who were killed. That’s when her mother first hears Ani had been raped. Her mother berates her for drinking at the party, laying the blame on Ani for the rapes, but says she will attain a lawyer.

Ani’s relationship with her mother is still strained as they prepare for her luxurious wedding 16 years later. Her mother doesn’t want to relive the situation. She hates that Ani blames her for making Ani stay at the Brentley School after the multiple incidents in order to get into the best college. She hates that Ani blames her for the slut-shaming; it’s not her fault Ani developed faster than other girls. What was she supposed to do with a curvy daughter accused of being involved in a school shooting because the daughter had been raped while drinking at an off-campus party? She wants Ani to ignore the past and focus on the present.

The emotions of the school shooting are rawer than ever as an independent documentarian, played by Dalmar Abuzeid, keeps reaching out to Ani to convince her to discuss the nation’s “largest private school shooting in history.” As the documentarian tries to get Ani on board, Ani watches Dean’s interviews on the TODAY show and other shows as he paints himself purely as the wheelchair-bound victim and continues the allegation that Ani knew the school shooting was going to happen. Getting famous off his memoir, Dean signs onto the documentary. So does Ani, as long as she doesn’t see Dean.

Jessica Knoll / Image: Sabrina Lantos

When she sits down for the interview taped at the staircase of the Brentley School, Ani tells her side of the story. She says she didn’t know her friends had plans to kill classmates over what happened to her and what happened to them. Her rapes became inconsequential to the coverage the public was fed about the shooting. During her interview, Dean starts wheeling himself toward her. She leaves, feeling unprotected again. The documentarian chases her outside and says her story will help other women. She says the women seem to be fine without hearing her story.

Back in Manhattan, Ani is a senior editor at a women’s magazine similar to Cosmo, but she has received an offer from The New York Times. She decides maybe her story could be told in her own way, so she writes a draft essay. Once her boss, played by Flashdance legend Jennifer Beals, skims the essay, she tells her own story of being raped by a high school boyfriend. The essay is not intense enough, she argues. Ani is too afraid to reveal her rapists and describe the nitty-gritty, including her true emotions. That will help women. Not surface-level bullshit.

Ani goes back to the drawing board by dropping in on one of Dean’s book tour stops in the city. Afterward, Ani approaches him about pushing the lie that she was involved in the shooting. Dean says he’ll stop pushing that lie if she keeps quiet about the rape. The power dynamics are in full range, where a man is believed over a woman, a boy is believed over a girl, especially a girl depicted as a slut after being sexually assaulted. Ani pushes that Dean should admit he had raped her when they were 16. He finally admits it, reluctantly, as if he’s tired of hearing that allegation. Satisfied, Ani walks away and makes sure her iPhone recorded their conversation.

Meanwhile, Ani arrives at her rehearsal dinner on Nantucket. She gets word that her new and improved essay will run in The New York Times. Her best friend from college, played by Justine Lupe, is thrilled for her. Ani’s fiancé Luke, played by Finn Wittrock, does not have the same reaction. Like Ani’s mother, he’s tired of hearing about the 16-year-old traumas, especially at their wedding weekend. Why can’t they be happy on the happiest of days? Why does Ani have to keep bringing up her traumas that always need unpacking? Ani admits that Luke was a box to check off on her list of a perfect life. She was a “wind-up doll” that said whatever she needed to say around him. After realizing that she needs to keep healing with a partner supportive of that healing, she calls off the wedding.

Back in the city, Ani is getting emails from women touched by her essay. They had been sexually assaulted, too. They were familiar with their assaulter or assaulters, too. They didn’t report the assault or assaults, too. They weren’t believed, too. Then another female reporter accosts Ani on Fifth Avenue and complains she didn’t have to ruin Dean’s reputation. After all, Dean has done so much for the community. Ani tells her to fuck off.

The film follows the novel, which is published by Simon & Schuster, almost to a T. In the end credits designed like the original paperback with bright yellow font against a wilting black rose that turns into a blooming red rose, the author is listed as the screenwriter and executive producer. For the author to have such a strong presence over the film, it brings a unique energy to the project.

Jessica Knoll fought to remain the screenwriter for the film, unlike many other authors who do not have the experience of writing screenplays. She may not have had the experience, but she knew she had to have ownership of how the story will play onscreen. The dedication is apparent as one of the better book-to-TV projects available on streaming now. She makes an early cameo in the elevator with Mila’s Ani on the way to work.

The cinematography, as in every scene is flawless, tells the story in different time periods, in different places exquisitely. We see the little things that annoy Ani, that would annoy many perfectionists, like a loose thread hanging from a steering wheel. We also see the simulated rapes and shootings that are very hard to watch, especially knowing it’s fiction based on true events.

Because of the graphic images, reviewers from top news outlets have said the film is unstructured. The film packs a lot with a heavy punch. The film is not fodder for true crime, another complaint in some of these reviews. It’s about a traumatized woman whose flashbacks are getting worse as a classmate’s memoir is selling and a documentary is forthcoming based on her traumas and void of her voice. She is not healed in the end despite the high readership of an essay about the traumas. It’s not a story representing every woman in the #MeToo movement. It’s one story that has many parallels to the author’s real-life story.

Watching the film is more intense than reading the book. Like we said above, the book had readers hate Ani, but watching two actresses play Ani in the throes of her traumatic experiences we first learn about in the book gives a more fine-tuned visual. If you were not affected by the story through the book, you will be affected by the story through the film. It’s a complex portrayal of a triggering story that came from the author’s own experiences. It was never an easy story to digest, but it was a story people were willing to read.

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film reviews

‘Passing’ Delves Into How Racial Identity Impacts the Life You Want

*Spoilers ahead! Read the book review on shelit.com and watch the film on Netflix or in select theaters*

Nella Larsen’s classic Passing is officially on the silver screen via Netflix telling the story of an ill-fated friendship between two fair-skinned Black women in 1920s Harlem that feels threatened with one woman assuming a White racial identity to fit in a racist society. 

Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, and Alexander Skarsgård star in the film set in the Roaring Twenties amid the Harlem Renaissance, with Rebecca Hall making her directorial debut. Shot in black-and-white, the film emphasizes those colors in the racial context and how they threaten the lives of Tessa Thompson’s Irene Redfield and Ruth Negga’s Clare Kendry Bellew. 

The story focuses on Irene and Clare reconnecting after they were separated as teenagers when Clare was sent away to live with her aunts after her father died. Living with her aunts, Clare learned how to pass as White and continued to do so in her marriage to international banker John Bellew while raising their daughter destined for boarding school in Switzerland. Irene is shocked Clare is living as a White woman, but she struggles with wondering what her life would be like if she passed. She’s decided to stay in Black Harlem with her Black family, her doctor husband Brian Redfield and their two sons. As both women wonder if the grass is greener on the other side, they realize the danger Clare has put herself in pretending to be what she’s not. 

Tessa Thompson plays Irene Redfield, the main character we see struggle with the emotions of letting this new version of Clare back into her life. Clare was just a forgettable childhood friend when Irene runs into her at a fancy Chicago hotel. To escape scorching temperatures, Irene seeks refuge there, depending on her fair skin to pass as White, a tactic that works. It turns out Clare is passing as well but full-time. 

Ruth Negga plays Clare Kendry Bellew, a Black woman hiding behind the visage of a White woman with her hard-to-miss dyed blonde hair and piled-on foundation to make her skin paler. When she spots Irene in the hotel’s tearoom, she sees an opportunity to connect with the Black community that she alienated long ago in an effort to forever live in carefree glamour. Except she knows she cannot be that carefree pretending to be White, yet she assumes the risk and sees if Irene could help her feel less lonely. 

While the book spaces their run-in and their meeting with Clare’s husband, the film puts the two defining events together. Once Irene realizes she is talking to Clare, they head to Clare’s room to talk more in-depth about their lives thus far. In the room, Clare explains her life and entices Irene to start passing. She even mentions how pregnancy was so hard on her in fear her daughter would come out dark-skinned and her raising her daughter now in hopes she never finds out her ethnicity. Irene rebuffs, saying her husband is dark-skinned and so are her two boys. Clare apologizes, not realizing that her fellow fair-skinned friend did not take the same route. Then Clare’s husband, John Bellew, played by Alexander Skarsgård, comes into the room. 

John calls Clare “Nig,” a shortened nickname from the n-word he bestowed upon her due to her tan. He claims Clare was “lily white” when they got married, but she’s been darkening ever since. To add insult to injury, he spews hate for Blacks and says Clare hates them even more. This, of course, makes Irene uncomfortable. She tries to get more answers for the root of this hate like if they know any Blacks, and the answers in the negative don’t satisfy Irene. She gets up and leaves. 

André Holland plays Dr. Brian Redfield, Irene’s husband, who at first doesn’t want his wife to spend time with Clare because of the incident at the hotel. The conversation comes up again due to a letter from Clare that Irene doesn’t want to open. Brian opens it instead and mocks Clare’s cries of loneliness written on paper. But a few weeks later, Clare shows up at the Redfield residence in Black Harlem wondering why her letter went unanswered. There, Irene and Brian are forced to deal with Clare. 

Though he did not want anything to do with Clare, Brian seems smitten with the charismatic Clare, who has heads turning everywhere she goes with the Redfields. Clare can finally be the socialite she wants to be since she’s with the Black elite and their White counterparts. Brian, on the other hand, can forget about his troubles of reading about lynchings in the South and educating his sons about the hatred toward their skin color. He wants to move out of the country to not be discriminated against for his race, but the idea hangs over him and Irene. To his wife, he seems unhappy in general, especially with Irene’s decision to avoid the lynching news at home, wanting to keep the boys innocent. With Clare, Brian looks like his frown has been turned upside down. 

The pressure of dealing with Clare the “princess”—what White author Hugh Wentworth, played by Bill Camp, calls her at the social functions—gets to Irene, who confides in Hugh when Brian dances and converses with Clare. We first meet Hugh at a dance in a Cotton Club-like setting where Irene invites Clare for the first time. Clare is dancing with every Black man like Hugh’s White wife, and Hugh and Irene talk about exoticism, the reason these White women want to dance with Black men. Then he picks up that Clare is passing, as Irene doesn’t expressly say it, but they talk about why someone would pass. In another scene, when Irene is already distraught over her emotions of having Clare in her life, Hugh lies to protect Irene when she drops a porcelain teakettle. The disturbance stops the party momentarily, with Clare staring at Irene, taking a break from her conversation with Brian and other partygoers. 

The more frustrated Clare becomes, the more depressed she is. While out shopping with her friend Felise, who in the book is described as having “golden” skin and “curly black Negro hair” and is played by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Irene bumps into John. He outstretches his hand, but Irene refuses and walks off. She tells Felise she met him the only time she passed as White. The details of Clare’s husband are omitted. But Irene knows that the jig is up for not only her but for Clare. 

The ending that seems as rushed in the film as it is in the book shows the dire consequences following Clare at all times, and how she finally is found out by her husband, and that discovery leads to her demise. Irene opens the window moments before to smoke a cigarette when John is screaming to see his wife. Partygoers try to tell John his wife wouldn’t be there, but John sees “Nig” and goes after her. Clare positions herself in front of the window beside Irene as protection, but she edges even closer to the window. As John lunges toward Clare, Irene puts her arm across Clare’s waist. What looks like more protection also looks like a nudge. Either way, Clare tumbles stories down to her death. Clare is frozen while everyone else rushes outside. Having Clare dead in the snow is fitting; she was passing for White and now dies in a blanket of whiteness. The image of her body in the snow is the final shot from higher dimensions. 

Ruth Negga plays Clare perfectly. From the piercing stares at Irene to the false upbeat attitude she exudes, Ruth gives Clare that mystery and that agitation the character feels in her life as a fake White woman alienating herself from her true identity, her true community. The first time we meet her reflects the scene of the book where Clare is staring at Irene. Seeing Clare onscreen compared to her description in the book is striking with the blonde hair and overdone face. Then, she calling Irene a nickname that sounds like it was bestowed upon her by Black folks shows an exuberant Clare who’s been looking for an outlet to her loneliness. The way Clare’s comfort and discomfort passes across Ruth’s facial expressions exhibits the emotional depth of not only pretending to be something you’re not, but feeling the pressure to pretend to be safe and still not feel safe in an era where Black people could not freely move around.

On the flip side, Tessa Thompson carries the Clare-induced uncertainty and anxiety in her facial features as Irene. Irene is scared she is going to lose her husband to Clare, her stature as a socialite to Clare, and her boys’ affection to Clare. Moments filled with these feelings in the film stick out, for example, with the boys, asking for Clare because Brian told them she’d be home. Irene is upset that Brian would tell them Clare would be there, seeing the excitement rev her family up so much for Clare, not her. In another scene, Clare befriends Zulena, the Redfields’ maid played by Ashley Ware Jenkins, and they bask in the wintry sunshine. Irene has to ask Zu a few times to take her bag of groceries when she walks in. Then, Irene heads upstairs with Clare following behind her. She tends to a flowerpot on her windowsill, but it falls from the second-story window and breaks outside. Irene is already feeling like things are breaking apart, but she has to pretend everything is alright to make sure Clare is comfortable. 

Internet reaction shows some criticism over biracial actresses Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga playing the characters since for today’s standards they appear Black, and the characters are supposed to be fair enough to appear White. Others argue that the actresses’ complexions would’ve passed the brown paper bag test and allow them to pass as White. Either way, both the actresses performed superbly with showing the intricacies of race for Black women in particular who want to live their best lives in America. Though the story reflects a contemporary time from a century ago, the hardships remain today. 

The film’s cast will be featured on Netflix Book Club‘s “But Have You Read the Book?” that will start streaming Nov. 16 on Netflix’s YouTube and Facebook channels and be hosted by Orange Is the New Black actress Uzo Aduba.

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film reviews

Film Adaptation of Angie Thomas’ ‘On the Come Up’ Starts Production

Prolific young adult author Angie Thomas has teased the start of filming for her sophomore novel’s take on the big screen.

With Angie serving as a screenwriter and producer on the film, On the Come Up started filming Oct. 25, according to the author’s tweet.

In social media posts over the last week, the author drops other details such as actress Sanaa Lathan assuming her first stint as a feature film director. The film stars Jamila C. Gray as the main character Bri, a rising rapper trying to follow in her late father’s footsteps career-wise as her family battles eviction and deals with the aftermath of a traumatic school incident. Bri’s best friends Malik and Sonny will be played by Michael Cooper Jr. and Miles Gutierrez Riley, respectively.

The script is written by Kay Oyegun, who is no stranger to book-to-film projects with also penning episodes for Queen Sugar based on Natalie Baszile‘s novel of the same name and the screenplay for the upcoming Children of Blood and Bone from the debut novel of the young adult fantasy saga by Tomi Adeyemi. Variety reports that rappers Lil Yachty and GaTa are also a part of the cast.

According to Angie’s social media feeds, the project is being filmed in Atlanta.

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film reviews what's lit

Dakota Fanning’s Role in ‘Sweetness in the Belly’ Sparks Debate on Whitewashed African Stories

IMDb

The debut of the trailer for a film based on a critically acclaimed novel starring former child actress Dakota Fanning as a “White Ethiopian Muslim” shook up social media Wednesday.

The film based on the 2007 novel Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb met backlash on Twitter where users described their disgust for an African story being told from a White perspective. It reflects a long history in Hollywood of putting a White actress as the star in an African story, but the backlash may also hurt a black-directed project.

Many Twitter users questioned how an Ethiopian Muslim woman is being portrayed by a White blonde actress, but it appeared the majority of the responders may not have been aware of the novel.

In the publisher Penguin Random House’s summary of the book, the story has the main character, Lilly, become orphaned by her parents’ murders. She is then raised in a Sufi shrine in Morocco before making a pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia (disclaimer: my paternal family’s homeland), where she not only teaches the Qur’an to children but also falls in love with a doctor. Even with sporting her hijab, her foreignness is targeted. This forces her to flee to England, where she feels like a real foreigner.

The premise has a problematic plotline that is being magnified in today’s hyper-racial atmosphere. With the book centering on a fictional White woman’s perspective of Islam in a black African country, the story could be seen as offensive with very few stories if any, especially in the Western mainstream, focusing on Ethiopian Muslim women.

The film actually has an Ethiopian director, Zeresenay Mehari. His 2015 film Difret, based on a true story, is about a young Ethiopian girl who accidentally kills her kidnapper and the lawyer defending her in the murder trial. With Angelina Jolie named as executive producer, the film can be seen on Netflix. Zeresenay stopped tweeting around the time of the promotion campaign for Difret, so there was no response from him on the social media network where his newest film was trending.

On Instagram, Dakota responded to the outrage by emphasizing her character’s British, non-native African heritage and that the film’s director is Ethiopian along with many of the characters that will revolve around her character.

“Based on a book by Camilla Gibb, this film was partly made in Ethiopia, is directed by an Ethiopian man and features many Ethiopian women,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “It was a great privilege to be a part of telling this story. The film is about what home means to people who find themselves displaced and the families and communities that they choose and that choose them.”

Hollywood has a long history of portraying African stories from a White perspective with vintage examples including Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. Though Sweetness in the Belly is more modern, it still depicts a historical event—the civil war in Ethiopia that stretched from 1974 to 1991—without a major U.S. film to tell the story of native Ethiopians during that time.

Should Dakota have been attacked for her portrayal when the Ethiopian director obviously cosigned on the representation of his culture from the perspective of a White author’s fictional work? Or did the director feel this would be an acceptable representation of Ethiopian Muslims for America to digest? The backlash has reinforced the racial divide in storytelling, especially when it comes to women: pitting White women and non-White women against each other over how stories should be told involving non-White groups.

On another note, The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, an Ethiopian female author who writes about wartime Ethiopia, comes out this month if you’re looking for a novel focusing on the East African country and its history.

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film reviews

‘The Sun Is Also a Star’ Sees Mediocre Reviews: Is Multicultural YA Viable on Silver Screen?

Nicola Yoon’s best-selling young adult romance The Sun Is Also A Star transformed into a movie this past weekend, but the critics didn’t seem to love it. Now with a score of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, this story about interracial love bombed at the box office, so how does that impact other multicultural YA novels blossoming into films?

So far, the movie grossed $2.5 million, significantly below the anticipated $6 million to $12 million from 2,100 theaters, according to Variety. Deadline Hollywood said the film’s ultimate box office return on its $9 million production budget looks dismal with even the author’s debut novel-turned-movie Everything, Everything opening at $11.7M in 2017 and finishing with almost $62 million globally.

The movie follows the novel well with Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi of Grown-ish) heading to an immigration lawyer to save her family from deportation scheduled for the next day when she bumps into Daniel Bae (Charles Melton of Riverdale), who believes their meeting is kismet. As science-minded Natasha fights Daniel’s determination to make her believe in love and fall in love with him, they’re savoring every moment they can together in New York City. With the cinematography expertly showcasing the city, the marshmallow fluffiness of love that readers adored falters a bit onscreen.

And reviewers emphasized that. Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a C while it gave the book in 2016 an A with having the exclusive of the cover reveal. Separate reviewers graded the film and book, but it’s jarring to see such variations for the same media outlet.

The New York Times editors added the book to its curated top children’s books of 2016. “The story and its trappings feel a little generic, the dialogue studiously bland and the characters and their problems curiously weightless, in spite of gestures in the direction of real-world issues,” A.O. Scott wrote in the film review. And “generic” pops up in the headline for the review as well.

Potential moviegoers also saw casting issues with both stars being biracial when Natasha and Daniel were not in the story. Yara is half-black, half-Iranian when Natasha is fully Jamaican, a contrast visible in the film where the actors representing Natasha’s family have a darker complexion. Charles is half-white, half-Korean when Daniel is fully Korean, another contrast visible with the actors playing his family look fully East Asian as his attractiveness is mentioned. It’s the same issue that reared its head in the casting of Nick Young’s character in Crazy Rich Asians.

How this successful novel became an unsuccessful film may not influence future multicultural YA adaptations, but the magic of a book is hard to capture, and casting and script-writing obviously plays a role in the high-profile critiques and bringing the key audience into theaters.

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film reviews

How the Introverted Black Writer Girl Became Visible in ‘Poetic Justice’

Alone, all alone. Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.

Poetic Justice brought the modern literary black woman to film in 1993 when John Singleton, the Oscar-nominated director, wrote it and had pop performer Janet Jackson breathe life into the role. The film deserves a spotlight for its innovation at the time with Hollywood reflecting on the works of Singleton, who died at 51 today.

Justice (Janet Jackson), a young black woman living in South Central LA, is reeling from the murder of her fresh-out-of-jail boyfriend at a drive-in theater. Depressed, Justice adjusts to her loneliness and writes poetry in a notebook she carries with her everywhere. At the hair salon where she works as a beautician, she shares her gift of poetry with her boss and her best friend, Iesha (Regina King). When a hair show comes up in Oakland, it turns out Iesha can get them a ride that same weekend with her postman boyfriend who has to drop off packages there. Justice says no, like she’s been voicing since she lost her own boyfriend while her boss and Iesha keep telling her the best way to get over one man is to get another. She decides to ride to the hair show alone, but her car won’t start, so she has to call Iesha for help who arrives with the large white postal truck with Iesha’s boyfriend Chicago and his friend Lucky (Tupac Shakur).

Justice has already met Lucky as the hair salon’s thirsty postman, so she’s not happy to see him. The group then embarks on an adventurous road trip. Annoyed at the situation, Justice ignores Lucky, who becomes bothered by it until they begin cussing each other out on the side of the road. Justice hops out of the truck in the middle of nowhere rural desert California and walks with her stuff on the side of the highway with Iesha trying to convince to jump back in. Eventually Justice does. They then go to a convenient store, a family reunion, and an African festival. During these events, Justice and Lucky bond while Iesha and Chicago deteriorate.

Along the way, Chicago is abandoned on the side of the road after he punches Iesha, who claims to have slept with someone else after they had another cheating-related altercation at the reunion. By the time they get to Oakland, Lucky sees his rising rapper cousin being wheeled into an ambulance with bullets to the chest. Not only dropping off packages is Lucky’s plan in Oakland, it really is to join his cousin and make music in the rap game. With his cousin dying, Lucky blames Justice for him getting there too late as if he could’ve saved his cousin. Justice is hurt as she’s dropped off at the hotel for the hair show with Iesha. As Lucky comforts his aunt and uncle and convinces them he should inherit his cousin’s music equipment, Justice is at the hair show stoically perfecting hairstyles on models. Days later, Lucky brings his daughter to the hair salon where Justice works and apologizes to her. They realize they’re in love.

What’s lit about this classic film is it told the story of the black girl poet, a character rarely seen on the silver screen, internalizing what she sees and putting pen to paper despite the chaos around her. And she’s a soft-spoken poet where she’s not performing her poetry aloud on a stage—a common place to see poets in real and fictitious worlds when in actuality it might take the average poet a long time to work up to such confidence. Justice lives among ruins left behind by the 1992 LA uprising amid arrests, drug sales, and other inner city troubles. On top of it, Justice lost her mother to alcoholism and lives in a home alone with her cat. She’s trying to come to terms with the loneliness and depression caused by loss. Though she’s a hairstylist, for example, she wears hats to hide the new growth from her box braids. Her appearance alone screams a stereotype of urban black girl with also wearing  trapezoidal gold bamboo earrings, but society wouldn’t expect the melodious words coming from her crafted behind the scenes by Maya Angelou. The film still deserves its props more than 25 years later.