'Purple Hearts': Director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, actor Sofia Carson defend Netflix flick amid racism charges
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Every now and then Hollywood comes out with a movie that stirs up controversy due to the racism and misogyny shown in it. Joining this list of movies is Netflix’s ‘Purple Hearts’ in which Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine star in lead roles. There was a lot of excitement around the movie and fans, especially young adults, were eagerly waiting for the movie to arrive. However, the movie got panned by critics and received a lot of backlash for handling issues surrounding the military and race.
Although the movie has become a giant hit on the streaming platform, it continues to receive a lot of negative comments about racist and misogynistic themes. In one of the scenes, a marine can be seen making a toast and saying, “This one is to life, love, and hunting down some goddamn Arabs, baby!” Initially, Carson’s character calls him out for his racist behavior, but soon it’s forgotten and that’s not it. Galitzine’s character is also shown to be really conservative and some of his thoughts are also been considered really problematic.
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After receiving a lot of criticism, director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum and actor Sofia Carson finally broke their silence on the matter, revealing that they wanted to show how “flawed” the country is and took inspiration from the things that happened around them. In a recent interview with Variety, Rosenbaum also noted that she is just focusing on the positive reviews of the movie and explained why people need to understand that both characters were “bred” to hate each other.
“I hope that people understand that in order for characters to grow, they need to be flawed in the beginning. So we very much intentionally created two characters that had been bred to hate each other. In order for the red heart and the blue heart to the kind of turn purple, you have to have them be kind of extreme. They both have been neglected by the system; he’s hurt in a war that doesn’t seem to be ending and she’s slipping through the cracks of the healthcare system,” Rosenbaum noted.
The filmmaker also noted that the movie is all about “love” and how both characters, who are flawed, finally learn to love and respect each other.
Meanwhile, Carson felt really honored to be a part of a movie that’s “much more” than just a simple love story. She also reiterated that both characters come from different worlds and had their own shortcomings. She added, “Through the power of love, they learn to lead with empathy and compassion and love each other and turn into this beautiful shade of purple. We wanted to represent both sides as accurately as possible.”
Even after so much of criticism, the film has managed to eclipse a big-budgeted movie like ‘The Gray Man’ on the Global Top 10 list of Netflix. According to the streaming platform, the romantic drama was watched for 102,590,000 hours in the week from August 1 until August 7. These figures suggest that the movie eclipsed ‘The Gray Man’ to have the highest weekly viewing figure in 2022. Also, the movie is sitting comfortably at #1 in 83 countries.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ still holds the record for having the biggest launch in Netflix history. The movie was watched for 152,290,000 hours in the last week of 2021.
‘Purple Hearts’ is available for streaming on Netflix.