THE COLOR PURPLE (1985)
4K Ultra HD + Digital
Label: WBHE
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 153 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p Ultra HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Danny Glover, Adolph Caesar, Margaret Avery, Rae Dawn Chong, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey
The Steven Spielberg directed adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name arrived in 1985, it's a Black suffrage story that is set in rural Hartwell, Georgia from 1909 to 1949, where Southern blacks Celie (Whoopi Goldberg, Corrina, Corrina) and her younger sister Nettie Harris (Akosua Busia, The Final Terror) grow up treated cruelly and abused by their father (Leonard Jackson, Ganja & Hess), and inthe case of the Celie, raped by him as well, and eventually married/sold off to the equally cruel Mister (Danny Glover, Lethal Weapon). The decades spanning story is chock full of incest, rape, and cruelty, but also has that saccharine Spielberg glaze about that doesn't necessarily detract from the hard-edged material but softens it a bit. It's a gorgeous production lensed by Allen Daviau (Empire of the Sun), his camera soaking in all the Southern trapping, beautifully capturing the imagery that is a character unto itself. The cast is quite wonderful, featuring Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery (Terror at Red Wolf Inn), Willard Pugh (The Hills Have Eyes Part II), Laurence Fishburne (Event Horizon), and Rae Dawn Chong (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), and the entire film holds up quite well nearly 40 years later, eliciting the same emotional depth and streams of tears it did when I first saw it.
Audio/Video: The Color Purple (1985) arrives on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. framed in 1.85:1 widescreen in 2160p Ultra HD with the benefit of HDR10 WCG color-grading. Grain is finely resolved, fine detail in the period costuming and set design looks wonderfully filmic, and the HDR10 color-grading reproduced colors with a pleasing vividness that is never overbaked. The depth and clarity of the image is also quite fantastic, plus we get get deep inky blacks that are dialed in quite nicely with excellent shadow detail.
Audio chores are handled by a solid English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles. I never owned the previous Bu-ray so I don't have it to compare it to, but it's a well-balanced track and dialogue and sound design elements come through fine without any issues of hiss or distortion. The Quincey Jones score also sounds fantastic, utilizing the surround channels to deliver a full-bodied and robust experience.
No new extras were created for this release but we do get the full compliment of archival extras, these include the 27-min Conversations with the Ancestors: The Color Purple from Book to Screen; 29-min A Collaboration of Spirits: Casting and Acting The Color Purple; 24-min Cultivating a Classic: The Making of The Color Purple, and the 8-min The Color Purple: The Musical; as well as a pair of Teaser Trailers and the Theatrical Trailer.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard black keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwrok, which is replicated on the slipcover, which has been branded with the WB100 logo Inside there is a redemption code for a digital copy of the film in 4K.
Special Features:
- Conversations with the Ancestors: The Color Purple from Book to Screen (26:40)
- A Collaboration of Spirits: Casting and Acting The Color Purple (28:39)
- Cultivating a Classic: The Making of The Color Purple (23:35)
- The Color Purple: The Musical (7:36)
- Teaser #1 (1:26)
- Teaser #2 (1:14)
- Trailer (1:24)
