Precious • in.Movies
December 1, 2009
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It may take you a while to get motivated to see this picture. And not because you have to take a train and two buses to catch it at one of the 663 theaters where it's still playing nationwide, but because you know it's not going to be pretty — and because downer adult dramas about abusive people are not supposed to go over well in a recession. You know it's not an escapist film. And you're right.
But two minutes in and you realize you're in the hands of a skilled director, Lee Daniels, who will spare nothing to mold several deft performances, including compassionate turns from Paula Patton and Mariah Carey. He'll paint the big screen with so pain and depth you'll be glad you're in your own skin. Or maybe you empathize with Precious, played without cloying by Gabourey Sidibe. Then again, she doesn't really care about your sympathies. She's on her own coping with her weight, her looks, her image, her abandonment, her grief and her dreams.
Delivered in sparse and raw anti-Technicolor imagery, Precious goes hardcore from start to finish, skimming the same nerves that made moviegoers balk at The Passion of the Christ for not being a fair depiction. To be fair, Lee Daniels's film is not a compendium of Black America. It's a finely crafted sliver that is palpable, real and hard to watch.
At its core, the story, an adaptation of Sapphire's novel Push, is about despair and finding the people who will catch you when the cracks in the floor are the size of canyons. Falling again and again, Precious crashes through circumstances that seem unyielding and unforgiving. If ever learning to love yourself were a challenge, it is for this character.
Cutting through the even pace and rhythm of her day-to-day trials, no-frills supporting performers anchor the story in real life. And that's what's so jarring. Mo'Nique as the mother-in-denial lays out a psychosis that is hard to fathom but is surely someone's truth. Hers is a heart too twisted to touch. And in the dank of her greasy, broken home we could use a little fresh air. Yep, some varnish could have gotten smoothed all over this place to help us get through the look and the lighting, but that got stripped away. Daniels wants you in it without a tee-shirt on.
Don't go to Precious's place to get uplifted. Don't even go to appreciate what you've got. But go to experience another take on the human condition and to witness a complex mixture of love and circumstances that can make you redefine the words "patience", "faith" and "challenge". How those concepts play out in your mind is really the viewer's choice.Precious Credits
Lee Daniels Director/Producer
Geoffrey Fletcher Writer
Sapphire Writer (Novel: Push)
Gabourey Sidibe Precious
Mo'Nique Mary
Paula Patton Ms. Rain
Mariah Carey Mrs. Weiss
Sherri Shepherd Cornrows
Chyna Layne Rhonda
Xosha Roquemore Joann
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Photo Credit: Movie Night - Fernando de Sousa, Cinema, Victoria, Australia
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