"Rustin" and "The Color Purple"

My two cents on more prestige pics, incoming.  

"Rustin" is one of those films that I like the idea of more than I like the film itself.  It's a biopic of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who is best known for organizing the March on Washington in 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.  Rustin is considered a controversial figure because he was a socialist and a gay man.  However, being active since the 1940s for a number of causes, his influence on the Civil Rights movement was enormous.  The film focuses on Rustin's relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and specifically on the lead-up to the March on Washington.  

The film is designed for awards season, full of familiar faces playing important historical figures.  Chris Rock plays the head of NAACP.  CCH Pounder and Glynn Turman are in the mix as other organizers.  Aml Ameen delivers a very fine Martin Luther King Jr.  However, they're really just the backdrop for Colman Domingo's work as Bayard Rustin.  It's an instantly memorable performance, giving life to a character who feels incongruous to the way that the Civil Rights movement is usually portrayed onscreen.  Rustin is an out gay man who many of the rest of the Civil Rights leadership are uncomfortable with acknowledging.  But, of course, Rustin is unable to be anyone but himself.  He has to fight to be taken seriously, to get his ideas heard, and to do the work that he knows is possible.  I like the film best when it becomes a process story, and Rustin and his team are working out the logistics and PR for the March.  It gives Domingo the chance to really show off Rustin's gifts - his charisma, his persuasiveness, his unwavering commitment, and his ability to inspire.

All the right people are behind the camera.  Legendary theater great George C. Wolfe directs a script co-written by Dustin Lance Black and Justin Breece.  The Obamas' Higher Ground production company produced it for Netflix.  There's a new Lenny Kravitz song on the soundtrack.  However, in spite of this, "Rustin" doesn't feel like a big, important epic film, but rather something much smaller and scrappier - sort of epic-adjacent.  Though many famous figures pass through the frame, the scope of the film is limited to events that Bayard Rustin was directly involved in.  "Rustin," is about celebrating an overlooked man through all the work he did to make a historic moment possible.  And that's all it's interested in doing, which I appreciate.  

Now, on to the new film version of "The Color Purple," which I had a lot of trouble with.  I'd seen the 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, directed by Steven Spielberg, several times when I was younger, but at a point when I was probably too young for it.  It wasn't until seeing this version, adapted from the stage musical, that I finally worked out how all of the major characters were related to each other, and who was whose mistress or girlfriend or wife.  I also got a much better grasp on why there was controversy over the removal of a major LGBT relationship, and the negative depictions of so many of the black men in the story.     

I appreciate having a less whitewashed, more LGBT friendly, more nuanced version of "The Color Purple."  Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule and screenwriter Marcus Gardley certainly address all the criticisms, and have their own distinct take on the material.  The performances are very good, especially Fantasia Barrino as Celie, Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, and Danielle Brooks as Sofia.  Barrino and Brooks are both reprising their stage roles.  However, there are some fundamental problems here from the outset.  I haven't seen the stage musical of "The Color Purple," but I can tell there were a lot of songs cut, and a lot of story beats condensed.  At 141 minutes, which is shorter than the 1985 film, this version constantly feels rushed.  It feels like it's ticking off boxes, making sure all the important lines and plot points are accounted for, instead of letting the characters fully inhabit the universe and reach those moments organically.  I have no complaints about the songs or their energetic execution, but the added layer of unreality took a lot of getting used to.  

And while there were certainly improvements to some aspects of the film, I feel they could have been better.  The lesbian relationship is made more explicit, for example, but still rendered in very Hollywood terms with a fantasy dance sequence doing most of the heavy lifting.  The portrayal of Celie's oppressive husband Mister, played by Colman Domingo, is more sympathetic and complex, but the character ends up losing a lot of his impact as the chief villain.  It's also clear that the filmmakers were doing their best to avoid evoking the Spielberg version, and ended up undercutting some vital sequences.  The finale, for instance, makes the choice to have everyone in monochromatic clothing instead of the famous purple outfits, which is totally unnecessary and sacrifices a big thematic element.     

Points for effort, but the 2024 "The Color Purple" just doesn't work as a film as well as the 1985 one did, and I expect that it didn't work as a musical as well as the theatrical version.  It's fine as a showcase for some talented performers, and the discourse around it has been valuable, but I came away from the film itself with very mixed reactions.   

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