The Color Purple appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. Across the board, the film looked strong.
Sharpness seemed very good for the most part, as the majority of the film appeared to be crisp and accurate. A smidgen of softness occasionally crept into a few shots, but those instances remained minor and likely impacted by some intentionally gauzy photography. Most of the time, the image remained concise and well-defined.
No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized; both edge haloes and obvious use of noise reduction failed to appear as well, so I saw light but natural grain. Source flaws seemed to be absent.
Colors looked consistently warm and vibrant. Spielberg gave the proceedings a rather lovely tone – sometimes inappropriately so for this story – and these hues seemed to be nicely vivid and lush.
Sensibly, purples were best of the bunch, as they came across as quite gorgeous. Red dresses also presented lively and rich hues. HDR added range and impact to the tones.
Black levels seemed to be deep and dense, and shadow detail was clean and appropriately opaque with no signs of excessive thickness. HDR gave whites and contrast extra power. The 4K UHD presented a consistently appealing transfer.
I didn’t expect a slam-bang soundfield from this kind of drama, but the DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix of the film complemented the story well. The track featured a fairly strong forward emphasis, and the front channels added a very nice layer of ambience and involvement.
Music displayed fine stereo separation, and a variety of effects also cropped up in the front side areas. These sounds could be a little “speaker specific” at times, and they didn’t always blend together terrifically well, but I still found them to offer a clean and engaging atmosphere.
Surround usage seemed to be less positive, but it appeared good for a film of this era and scope. For the most part, the rears provided little more than general reinforcement of the music and effects heard in the front spectrum.
During a few scenes, they came to life more forcefully, such as in a thunderstorm, but as a whole, they functioned as environmental elements. Overall, the mix complemented the film to a nice degree.
Audio quality also seemed to be good for its age, though a few concerns existed. Dialogue showed occasional signs of edginess, but most of the speech sounded rather warm and natural, with no problems related to intelligibility.
Music appeared bright and vivid. Effects were a little thin at tmes, but they came across as reasonably accurate and distinct, and I heard no signs of distortion or other issues. In the end, the audio of The Color Purple worked well.
How did the 4K UHD compare to the 2011 Blu-ray? Both came with seemingly identical audio.
The 4K’s visuals came across as more distinctive and warmer. While the Blu-ray looked great, the 4K kicked up the quality a notch.
Most of the BD’s extras repeat here. We get four featurettes, and we start with Conversations with the Ancestors: From Book to Screen.
It lasts 26 minutes, 40 seconds and focuses on writer Alice Walker for the most part. We find interviews with Walker, director Steven Spielberg, producer Kathleen Kennedy, producer/music producer Quincy Jones, and producer/second unit director Frank Marshall.
The first portion of “Conversations” focuses on the novel. Walker discusses her familial inspirations as well as other aspects of the book, and she gets into reactions it provoked, both good and bad.
From there, Spielberg discusses his involvement and how the story got to the screen. We learn of Walker’s power of approval over the director, her initial attempt to adapt the story into a script, changes made between the two and other elements.
We even get a little material about an unused “forgiveness scene”. Some may find “Conversations” to seem a little heavy on “talking heads”, but it conveys a lot of information. It gets across all these notes in a concise manner and seems like a useful discussion of the topics.
After this comes A Collaboration of Spirits: Casting and Acting The Color Purple. The 28-minute, 39-second program gives us info from Spielberg, Walker, Jones, Kennedy, casting director Reuben Cannon, and actors Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery, Danny Glover, Akosua Busia, and Rae Dawn Chong.
“Acting” stays true to its title, as it concentrates wholly on that side of the production. We find out how Goldberg, Winfrey, Avery and Glover earned their parts, and we get lots of good information about the challenges they faced on the set.
This includes various anecdotes as well as insight into the characters. Compelling and lively, “Acting” covers its subject well.
Next we find Cultivating a Classic: The Making of The Color Purple, a 23-minute, 35-second program that covers more of the technical aspects of the movie. We get remarks from Kennedy, Spielberg, Marshall, production designer J. Michael Riva, costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers, and director of photography Allen Daviau.
Not surprisingly, they mostly delve into sets, locations, clothes and cinematography. We learn about challenges related to the period costumes, Spielberg’s initial idea to film Purple in black and white, lighting the dark-skinned actors, the importance of Mister’s mailbox, Spielberg’s reactions to the public attitude toward the movie, and more.
The driest of the three documentaries to date, “Classic” seems a little flat and slow at times. However, it offers enough interesting details to make it worth a look.
For the final featurette, we get The Color Purple: The “Musical”. No, this doesn’t discuss the Broadway adaptation of the story or the 2023 version of the film.
Instead, it discusses some of the movie’s music. We listen to material from Spielberg, Jones, Avery, Walker, and Kennedy in this seven-minute, 36-second program.
At times, we find some nice details about the songs and their connection to the material. Unfortunately, too much of the program simply relates praise for Jones and his work, and “Musical” ends up as the least useful of the four documentaries.
The disc ends with three trailers. The 4K loses some stillframe collections from the Blu-ray.
Though The Color Purple enjoys a positive reputation, I fail to comprehend why, as the movie suffers from a vast number of flaws, most of which result from the work of its director. Steven Spielberg desperately tried to escape his reputation as an action-fantasy auteur, but the sweet and sugary vision of Black sisterhood seems less plausible than anything seen during ET or Close Encounters. The 4K UHD delivers excellent visuals, good audio and an informative batch of supplements. This turns into the best presentation of the movie on home video.
To rate this film visit the original review of THE COLOR PURPLE