Corrected entry: The kids and the men are decorating Easter eggs and Ceilie is stuffing a turkey. Shug gets the mail and takes Ceilie upstairs and hands her the letter. When she turns the letter over the date is July 10. But when she reads the letter she says the date is April 18, 1935. So if it's July, how is it Easter?
Corrected entry: Early in the movie Celie is giving birth to her first child, Olivia, and we are told it is winter 1909. The next scene it is revealed that Celie has now given birth to 2 children, a girl named Olivia and a boy named Adam. In a later scene Celie encounters the preacher's wife in town, and we are told that it is Spring 1909. The wife says the baby is 7 months old. Not only are the years off, but if Celie had given birth to a second child already, the little girl would've been a lot older.
Correction: Celie had Adam before Olivia. We only see her giving birth to Olivia because she has previously given birth to Adam before the opening scene of the movie.
Yes Adam was born before and we see Celie giving birth to Olivia, her second child in Winter 1909. So how can Celie then go to town in the Spring of 1909 and bump into baby Olivia and her adopted mother? It's 6 months before she gave birth.
Winter 1909 could be anywhere from January 1, 1909 to March 19, 1909, and Spring could be from March 20 to June 21. If we assume, due to the weather in the scene, Olivia was born in early January, then she could feasibly be 6 months old in late Spring, and Corrine could have mixed up the age due to Olivia not having been born from her.
Corrected entry: Sophia is carrying her baby as she and Celie enters Sophia's house. After they enter, Sophia goes to the table and gets the baby's bottle and tells the baby, "Miss Celie gonna get the baby some milk." She should have said her own name, Sophia.
Correction: Sofia says "Now let's see, we gonna get you some milk."
Corrected entry: Sofia leaves Harpo together with her children. Years later, when she gets slapped by the mayor, two of them are with her, and they haven't aged since. (00:43:45)
Correction: Harpo and Sophia have more than two children. The last child to be removed from Harpo's lap when Sophia leaves is infant/toddler age and placed in the truck. The names of the children (more than two) are mentioned by Celie when she bids them farewell. The two children in the scene with the mayor years later are most likely the two youngest, including the one that was the infant/toddler years before.
Corrected entry: In town, Celie checks Corrine's baby's diaper to see if she had a diaper on that Celie had stitched with the name Olivia. However, Nettie teaches Celie to read and write after Celie's marriage to Mister.
Correction: Celie can already read, just not very well. When she and Nettie are talking about Mister in the room together and coming up with a plan for when Mister makes a move on Nettie, it is actually Celie who suggests they write. Nettie asks her if she can read good enough and Celie says she can't say that she does. That's when they decide that Nettie will teach her to read better.
Correction: Celie also states she embroidered moons and stars on the diapers. She could have been checking for those, as well.
Corrected entry: During the scarification chant, you see Adam being scarred on his right cheek. At the end of the movie when Adam meets Celie for the first time, there is no scar on the right side of his face at all. (00:37:20 - 01:05:20)
Correction: The character that is being scarred in the ritual is not Adam, but Adam's classmate and friend. This friend can be observed as not being Adam in other scenes of the movie.
Corrected entry: As Albert is driving Shug in the wagon to his home in the rain, we see the outside of the house, which is not Albert and Celie's farm house. The house shown has elaborate steps and pillars.
Correction: It is simply the other side of the house. Throughout the movie we see mostly the back of the farmhouse. The side with the elaborate pillars is the front, which is not used often.
Corrected entry: Late in the film, Albert takes one letter out of the mailbox from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In the typed address, the numbers '02' can be seen after the state of Georgia. ZIP codes were not in use until the mid-1960's, not in 1937. In addition, the '02xxx' ZIP code is for Massachusetts, not Georgia.
Correction: There is no zip code shown for either the return address or the delivery address.
Corrected entry: Ceeli doesn't know Mister's real name until after Shug Avery comes into the picture and calls him 'Albert'. This was after Nettie was sent away, yet when Ceeli finds a letter from Nettie in the mail and reads it out loud Netti refers to Mister as 'Albert'. How could she know this?
Correction: Presumably, she found out from the people she traveled to Africa with, which must also be how she found out about Celie having a different biological father.
Corrected entry: Whoopie Goldberg writes notes to herself on waxed paper. She's not shown actually writing, but the medium is obviously felt-tip marker, which was invented decades after the action takes place.
Correction: If she is not shown writing, then we can't be sure a felt-tip marker was used. It looks more like a thick pencil lead.
Or it could have been a black crayon.
Corrected entry: When Celie sees her baby in town with the Reverend's wife, she says that she stitched the baby's name [Olivia] on all her diapers. But at the beginning of the movie, the baby is taken from her right after she's born [Celie even states that at her mother's funeral]. How could she have known the baby's sex to have stitched 'Olivia' on her diapers?
Correction: When Nettie delivered Celie's 2nd child she says out loud that it is a girl. That is how she know the sex of the child to give her the name Olivia.
Yes, but the embroidery work on the diapers would've been done before the baby arrived and she said he took the diapers with the baby right after birth so the diapers were definitely embroidered before the birth. I agree with OP, the movie didn't explain how she knew it was going to be a girl before the birth to embroider the diapers beforehand.
Corrected entry: It doesn't make sense that Celie's children can't speak a word of English when they come back from Africa. They had been with Nettie all the time and with the missionaries for many years, and even if they had eventually resorted to speaking the local language exclusively there should be enough English left that they could greet their mother. (01:05:20)
Correction: If you listen closely to Olivia, she is actually speaking perfect English to her mom. She says, "Mama, I want to know you mama. My mother?" she then, as she is crying and being embraced by her mother, repeats, "I want to know you mama."
Corrected entry: When Celie is giving birth to Olivia it says Winter 1909. Later on in the movie when she is in the cloth store and thinks she sees her daughter, Olivia, it says Spring 1909.
Correction: That's wrong. Adam was born first and taken while Celie was sleeping. Olivia is the second born.
It was probably in January (winter) 1909. However, if it was spring, the baby wouldn't be more than 5 months old.
Correction: No, in 1909 she gave birth to her son Adam. Olivia had already been born and given away.
Correction: That is how long it took for the letter to get from Africa to Celie in rural Georgia.
Yes, it would take months for the letter to arrive which is the point OP is making. It was written in April, received in July, so why is the family painting Easter eggs in July? It's either Easter and the prop department made an incorrect postmark, or it's July and the director choose to have them painting Easter eggs for no apparent reason.