Triumph from Tragedy
Sergio Mims Reviews “Precious”
2009-11-05
By Sergio Mims

CAST:    Gabourey Sidibe
             Mo’Nique
             Paula Patton
             Mariah Carey
             Sherri Sheppard
WRITTEN BY: Geoffrey Fletcher
DIRECTED BY: Lee Daniels
**1/2  - TWO AND  A HALF STARS

To call Precious a hard to watch, depressing film would be an understatement. It is relentlessly bleak, aggressively downbeat, endlessly brutal. The film’s lead character Precious Jones (played by Sidibe) suffers enough abuses and torments to qualify her for sainthood. She carries the weight of the world for all black women who have been abused, unloved, unwanted and unwelcome into society’s beauty standards. It is an ambitious film despite its faults, by a director (Lee Daniels) who, if not exactly confident in his approach to the material, shows a passion and integrity that is admirable.

Based on the popular and controversial 1997 book, Push, by Sapphire, the film is the tragic story of Precious, an obese teenager with odd features including a massive jutting jaw that makes her not unlike an Easter Island statue. Pregnant with her second child as a result of rape by her father, Precious lives a torturous existence with her cruel, physically and emotionally abusive nightmare of a mother (Mo’Nique). Friendless, constantly mocked by strangers, and with another stunning blow to her psyche yet to come, she retreats to fantasies to escape the horror film she lives,  imagining herself living a glamorous life with a light-skinned boyfriend to boot.

Eventually she winds up in a GED program taught by a tough but caring instructor (Paula Patton) and slowly through her help, Precious begins the painful journey of self-awareness, and the more difficult path of self acceptance and love.

With such a heavy, unforgiving subject it’s not surprising the film lurches into heavy handiness, a common trait in “serious” black films. Even worse, the film’s narrative structure and drive tends to wander about and falls slack at times. Visually the film is arresting with Daniels going for some experimental shifts in the color palate especially during the film’s first scenes where the mood takes on a garish, lurid, putrid feel reminiscent of the “giallo’ horror films of the Italian film director Dario Argento (Suspiria). Daniels still can’t help himself and throws in virtually every cinematic trick in the book, whether it works or not, like someone who’s trying out a movie camera for the first time.

Though the major leads in the film (Sidibe, Mo’Nique and Patton) will no doubt get ecstatic reviews for their performances and perhaps possible Oscar nominations, the hype doesn’t live up to reality. All three are good in their roles, but they play for the most part one-dimensional characters. Mo’Nique as the mother from Hell, Sidibe as the tragic victim and Patton as the Savoir, are all standards in this genre.

Most surprisingly the best performance in the film comes from, of all people, Mariah Carey, without makeup and revealing what Nick Cannon sees every morning. As the seen-it-all, heard-it-al social worker assigned to Precious’ case,  she gives a wonderfully subtle, nuanced, performance.

Not to be hung up on color, but I do have one quibble with the film. That the three saviors for Precious (Carey, Patton and Lenny Kravitz) are all light-skinned, bi-racial people while the darker skinned Sidibe, Mo’Nique and the briefly seen father are either pathetic, helpless or cruel people in need of salvation is problematic and sends the wrong message. If this is a film ultimately about transcending circumstances, that is a dynamic that is hard not to notice.

Precious is by no means a perfect film. Its uneven nature limits its full impact, but it is powerful nonetheless. It’s a valiant effort and Daniels deserves all the credit in the world for trying to pull off a Herculean task.