PRECIOUS Review:
- The bottom line on Precious is that it ranks up there as one of the most powerful and affecting movies so far this year. At the same time though, it's dark, bleak, and sometimes simply hard to watch. You've got to admire it for not pulling punches. Precious left me feeling like I'd just been punched in the gut, but I'm also glad I had the opportunity to spend some time in its world. This is a movie that's about people and places that you rarely see in the glamorized world of the movies. This is a movie about ugly people (on the outside and in) and ugly places. Like last year's Slumdog Millionaire, it's a movie that wholly transports you into a world of poverty, abuse, sickness, and brutality. But while Slumdog was a modern-day fairytale of sorts, Precious is definitely not. There are no happy endings, and this is no fable. In Precious, the fantasy elements are strictly confined to the imagination of the title character. She imagines herself as a movie star and pop diva, transports herself into these personas in her darkest, scariest moments. But the character's reality remains grim and hard. The bittersweet triumph of the movie is that somehow, Precious trudges on and doesn't give up. Given her circumstances, the very fact that she pushes forward at all is her own brand of victory.
The movie tells the story of a teenage girl living in Harlem in the 1980's. Precious lives in a dilapidated apartment with her abusive mom-from-hell, who lives off welfare with no intent of ever finding a job. She's content to sit around all day watching TV, verbally abusing Precious and essentially treating her as a slave. Precious' absentee father was also abusive. He raped his own daughter on multiple occasions, leaving her with one incestuously-conceived, Down Syndrome-afflicted baby, and another on the way. Precious nightmare of a home life is more than enough to make school a burden. Even when Precious tries to focus on her studies, her mother barks at her to forget about schoolwork and concentrate on keeping their welfare going. Even though Precious has a talent for math, her mother repeatedly tells her that she'll never amount to anything.
The turning point for Precious comes when a school counsellor recommends her for an alternative learning program for teens from troubled backgrounds. Precious practically wills herself to attend the program, grasping for anything that could be means of escaping from her personal hell. Once there, she finds an encouraging teacher and classmates who become some of her first real friends. Now, this is where many movies would fall into cliche and just become feel-good fables about coming up out of the ghetto and making something of yourself, etc. But Precious doesn't just magically become a success story. Even after she joins her new program, the hardships continue to pile up, and her situation at home becomes even more tumultuous. There are moments of happiness and humor, but there's never that sunshine-and-lollypops moment of glee. The movie is unabashadly dark and gritty and grotesque, and even the funny moments have a kind of gallows-humor quality to them.
Something that's going to get a lot of attention come Oscar time is that Precious features many outstanding performances, all of which are from either complete unknowns, or else from actors who you'd never expect had such dramatic talent in them. First off, newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is pretty remarkable as the title character. As Precious, Sidibe is stoic, almost emotionless - a hardened, damaged young woman who has endured the absolute worst that life has to offer. And yet, bottled up somewhere deep is real emotion, real intelligence, real warmth. Sidibe makes it all feel so natural, so organic. This really is a breakthrough performance - no question. Sidibe is very good and very powerful as Precious, but perhaps even more memorable is comedienne Mo'Nique as her mother, Mary. Mo'Nique is just plain scary in this role. She plays a severely screwed-up, evil, abusive woman who is sometimes funny, but, more often than not, a true monster. Mo'Nique has moments in this movie that are just plain disturbing, and some of her diatribes will stick with you for a long time to come. The more we understand the psychology of Mary, the more ugly she becomes. This is a brave, soul-baring role for Mo'Nique, and I think that Oscar talk is definitely warranted.
The rest of the cast is also very strong. Before this movie, Mariah Carey was not someone who you thought of as a good or even competent actress, but the fact is that she does well in this one. Her role as a concerned welfare counsellor is fairly minimal, but she fits right in with the rest of the cast, and has some pivotal scenes with Precious and her mother. Rock mainstay Lenny Kravitz also appears in the movie as a male nurse who becomes friendly with Precious. Again, his role is pretty small, but he does a surprisingly good job with it. I'd also emphasize just how de-glamorized nearly everyone in the movie is. Carey especially is almost unrecognizable. I don't know what that says about her usual look, but here, her character is suitably tired and worn looking. She'd have to be, with the kinds of hopeless, hard-luck characters she has to deal with on a regular basis.
The one character who is a bit more glamorous is Paula Patton as Precious' cool, alternative-school teacher, with the appropriately hipster-ish name of Blue Rain. Patton treads the line of being the cliched "cool inner-city teacher" character, but I think she does a nice job with the role and helps elevate it beyond what it might have been in less capable hands. I like that her character serves as an example of a successful and urbane African American woman, who has carved out a niche for herself, yet is still marginalized to a large degree, for various reasons that I won't spoil. Suffice it to say, there's an interesting dynamic that develops, as her relationship with Precious evolves over the course of the movie.
Precious is a powerful, impactful movie, and it's a really strong effort from director Lee Daniels. Daniels immerses you in the movie's claustrophobic and grimy inner-city setting, and he has no qualms about painting his actors in a stark, unflattering light. I do think though that the movie just misses the mark of being a flat-out "A." There are just a number of moments where you expect the script to deliver a knockout punch, and yet the impact isn't quite as huge as it might have been. It's a tricky balance, because the tone of the movie can be a bit all over the place. There are moments of real levity and humor mixed in with the melodrama, and then there are the fantasy sequences that, while interesting reflections on Precious' psyche, can sometimes feel a bit too typical for such a complex and unique character. And again, there is the fact that the movie ultimately proves so bleak of a narrative that it's almost hard to know what, exactly, to take away from it. There are rays of hope, sure, but in the end, the fact remains that this movie is abuses its lead character almost to a fault. The old adage of "it can always be worse" seems to be playing out before our eyes, and that can be hard to take as a viewer.
Still, Precious is a must-watch in that it goes to the places that most other movies won't. Like I said, nothing about this movie is glamorized. Precious is a sullen, overweight, odd-looking, inner-city teen girl who is about as far removed from a typical Hollywood protagonist as you can possibly get. Her life is one big struggle just to survive and endure, and with this movie we go along with her for part of that ride. It's a tribute to the narrative that you have to wonder aloud that this movie isn't based on a true story. It feels so real and authentic that it feels like more than just fiction. It feels like Precious is a real person who we've spent time with and empathized with and lived with. This is a movie that feels real, and yet takes us to a place that for most will be strange and terrifying and disturbing, and you feel slightly traumatized by it, and yet richer for having gone there. That's the mark of a powerful film.
My Grade: A-
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