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Gabriela Perez |
Date: 2009-11-24

Perhaps "thought provoking" isn't the right phrase to use. This movie will whip you about and leave you breathless, most especially if you've never really considered the plight of children/people like Precious.

I have been teaching adult students for a little over ten years now, and I have had many women whose backgrounds were similar to Precious' background, so the subject matter wasn't new to me. I expected to be moved, but I didn't expect to have to struggle to stop crying after the movie was over.

The movie is about a teenager named Precious (a truly ironic name, as she is told and shown repeatedly that she is NOT precious to anyone in her immediate circle) and the horrific circumstances of her life at the age of 16. She is pregnant with her second child, the product of incest (her "father" rapes her, a fact which her mother chooses instead to see as Precious threatening her by taking away her man and giving him more babies than he ever allowed the mom to have), and she is barely holding together some semblance of a normal life by keeping her true circumstances from everyone around her.

When her school principal becomes aware of her pregnancy, she decides to send Precious to an alternative school, and for the first time, the teenager has an opportunity to see her own potential and to have that potential respected by others. It's a truly life-altering opportunity, and Precious takes it.

What's really amazing in this film is the excellence of the acting. You've likely heard time and time again how Mariah Carey doesn't wear makeup and looks haggard and old, and you've probably heard about Monique's superb turn as Precious' mother. What can't be conveyed without you actually watching the movie is what all that means. To me, it meant witnessing moments when an actor found ways to manipulate his/her body language and expressions to create a character in one movement. Precious, for example, is both a burdened, pitiful human being whose scrunched-up face and blank expression tell the audience that she is very nearly spiritually dead. Then, in an instant, she begins to daydream, and her body, her expression, her entire carriage is transformed. She radiates happiness and sensuality, a sense of being totally alive and joy-filled. It's more than the clothing and makeup. It's everything that shows up on her face, in the way she moves, in the lifting of her brow so that she no longer looks closed off to life. Incredible.

Monique is also excellent, from the bland expression of a couch potato who is frozen before the tube to the rage of a woman who feels betrayed by the very daughter she has betrayed so often. Awesome. There is a scene where she is trying to convince someone that she loves Precious, and she earnestly tries to prove that she has strongly positive and loving memories of her daughter, only to find that she can't even get the dates in the memory right, that she can't get something as important as a milestone date right. The expression on her face as she realizes both the depths of her own abandonment of her daughter and the fact that others can see through her I'm-a-great-mom facade--excellent.

There are many uncomfortable moments in this movie, moments that made my fellow audience members laugh but which truly were heartbreaking. In the midst of horrible abuse, a tiny glimmer of something funny--so tough to take, but also evidence of how life is rarely simply one thing or another.

Precious' life will blow you away if you've never met or known anyone like her. It will sadden you, and hopefully it will enrage you enough to do more for people like her. I know that it made me think about the strong women I've taught who pulled themselves out of situations like the one depicted in the movie, and it made me more determined to really get to know my students so that someone like Precious will not slip through the cracks when I can possibly help.

See this movie because the acting is so superb. Remember it because its imagery is powerful and real. And hopefully, never forget that there are many, many women and children out there who have had lives like Precious'.

Giordano Bruno |
Date: 2010-03-12

I meant to write a review of "Precious" even before I watched it. Lots of times, writing the review is more satisfying than watching the film. This is harder. I felt my heart constrict in the first scene of Precious. My eyes and temple began to throb. I could scarcely catch my breath the rest of the way through the film. "Life" requires too much of us sometimes. Sometimes even a simulation of Life requires too much.

Improbable as it may seem, coming from a retired classical musician like me, who has lived fairly well most of his life, a lot of the misery portrayed in Precious is horribly familiar and real. The poverty and brutishness and the haplessness of both takers and givers of "welfare" are not exaggerated here. Yeah, things seldom move that quickly or that much in 'real time', and yeah, Precious's classmates evolve from intolerable to empathetic as if by miracle. But the story line isn't very central to this film, or rather to my response to this film, which is all Sorrow for all of us, from Precious to Queen Elizabeth II. Life hurts too much. The rosy glow of Hope in "Precious", which some critics have applauded and some derided, is more light than warmth. There really isn't much chance for that girl-woman in the film, except for the one-in-sixty-million chance that she'll be discovered by a film maker.

"Precious" had a hundred times the impact on me that "The Hurt Locker" had. But I can't sit in judgment on the "art" of it as cinema. For sure, I won't forget it as quickly as I do most films.

Donna Dean |
Date: 2010-04-01

Once a movie or book has garnered a significant number of reviews I always read the one and two star reviews to try and assess why a minority of people feel so strongly that a work is so overwhelmingly bad as to merit the ultimate negative reviews. With Precious there is an interesting trend (or trendlet?)of dissing the movie for being depressing. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who's read or heard anything about it before seeing it. Of course it is! And avoiding being reminded of the more distressing aspects of life does nothing to dispel the realities for all too many people. Precious is not, contrary to one negative review, thoroughly unlikable, rather she is shielded and guarded by a fantasy life from the worst moments of inescapable misery and horror. She lives entirely in her fantasies as an escape, dissociating herself from that which she cannot literally remove herself. She has no friends, no adequate defenses, and only the hope to be found in her technicolored rock star/supermodel dreams.

I find it interesting that the negative reviews completely avoid the obvious: Precious is a film about the ultimate stereotypical Welfare denizens, poor, Black, and multi-generational losers mooching professionally off the system and wanting nothing else. There is a significant segment of our society who would clasp this film to its collective bosom whilst chanting "See? Like them!" Veddy in-te-res-tinck. But the film is more than that; it is a powerful example of the impact a little attention and effort to reach out to those who hurt can accomplish. No, the movie doesn't end with flowers and rainbows everywhere, it ends with a wan ray of hope shining in the dark. In the end, Precious escapes her hopeless prison by deciding she will define herself. One can only hope she manages to do so, against all odds.

Robert Moore |
Date: 2010-02-08

I've been trying to see all of the movies that feature large in the awards season and frankly had been putting this one off. By and large I've not been impressed by the films that have received many of the nominations this year. Many of them are amazingly bland and disappointing. PRECIOUS is a delightful exception. Not that it is a delightful film. It is often hard to watch, but nonetheless moving and very powerful. The story of a morbidly obese, illiterate sixteen-year-old who is pregnant with her second child (both by her father) and physically abused by her hopelessly inept mother (played brilliantly by Mo'Nique), this should have been the bummer film to end all bummer films. But you really come to love Clarice (Precious). Despite things getting worse and worse for her, you feel a tremendous sense of triumph for her when she manages to pull her reading level up from a second grade to a seventh grade level. And despite the horrid abuse that she has suffered, she is determined to be a better mother to her two children than either her mother or father were to her.

And what can you say about Gabourey Sidibe? This is one of the great debut performances ever by an actress. Ironically, in the depths of her horrible life Precious daydreams of being loved and finding improbable success as a celebrity, including a movie star. Now, I'm sure Gabourey Sidibe has not had a bad life, but who in the world would fantasize about getting an Oscar nomination for her first screen role? But that is precisely what she has achieved. And it is a nomination that she richly deserved, just as Mo'Nique deserved her nomination as best supporting actress. Mariah Carey also does a very credible job in a small but important supporting role.

The movie is also a terrible indictment of American society. On the one hand we are in the gripes of a national fever of hatred towards government, the only entity in most countries that does much to help salvage the lives of others. On the other hand, we are in the grips of a national passion for self-interested greed, with a vast right wing that has subtly absorbed libertarian notions (deriving not only from Ayn Rand, but especially from her) that compassion is a vice and blind self-interest a virtue. More than any other developed nation and despite almost inconceivable national wealth, millions of Americans suffer the fate of children like Precious. I personally consider those who possess the kind of self-interest advocated by Rand and many conservatives to be nothing short of monstrous, to be aberrations of nature, moral deformities. One of my closest friends is a social worker and says that Precious's story is far from unique, but in fact a commonplace. Why we in America, the richest country in the world, won't do anything to help all Americans is a mystery to me.

This ought to be a must-see movie for everyone. It is an extremely well-acted, deeply moving, and well-directed film that anyone who loves movies will enjoy.

S. Curley |
Date: 2010-01-27

Saddled with an unwieldy subtitle due to another film of the novel's original name being released in 2008, "Precious" is nevertheless one of the standout films of 2009. The second film of director Lee Daniels (the first went undistributed), previously the producer of some films as "Monster's Ball" and "The Woodsman", this is a grueling look at life in the lowest dregs of American society, where hope for the future is a fragile thing indeed. Backed by such prominent African American media icons as Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, it is a film well worth seeing.

We open in Harlem in 1987, in an America wholly divorced from the "Morning in America" that Ronald Reagan spoke of. Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe, in an amazing breakout performance; sadly, I can't imagine someone of her weight getting too many lead roles in the future) is sixteen years old, obese, illiterate, and more or less listless. One can hardly blame her, given the circumstances: repeatedly raped and twice impregnated by her own father, she lives with her abusive mother Mary (comedian Mo'Nique, playing way against type in a searing depiction of pure evil). Precious struggles to make her way forward, while a collection of moderately sympathetic authority figures (something of a first for her) enter the picture. Chief among these is Ms. Rain (first name Blu; someone's mother didn't like her very much), played by Paula Patton, and a social worker played by Mariah Carey (deglammed to the point of unrecognizability).

Based on an even bleaker novel, "Precious" would probably cause Thomas Hardy himself to balk and advise a bit of letting up on the protagonist. The cast, virtually all female (the only significant male character is Lenny Kravitz as a male nurse, and there are half a dozen characters with more screentime than him), carries the film. Sidibe and Mo'Nique, the latter virtually sweeping the supporting actress awards this year, are the main attractions. Mo'Nique's Mary is the year's most frightening cinematic villain. Also deserving recognition is Patton, who is luminous (and seemingly the only castmember with access to makeup, which makes her stand out even more). Carey and Kravitz also acquit themselves well in their minor roles.

Recommended (for those with a strong stomach).