The winner of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, this is an unrelentingly powerful drama about a girl who has everything going against her, including her own cruel mother. Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, and directed by Lee Daniels (Monsters Ball, the Woodsman, Shadow Boxer), “Precious” is a heartbreaking portrait of someone consistently beaten down by life but who somehow manages to survive.
16 year old Clarice “Precious” Jones (Wonderfully played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) is trapped in a nightmarish life of overwhelming sorrow. She is poor, illiterate and abused. She suffers from obesity. She is unpopular. School, for her, consists of hours of mocking torment by other students. She has been raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who is also her father and she’s pregnant with his second child.
Precious is sullen and quietly despairing. She rarely talks and rarely smiles. She gets through each dark day by retreating into the sanctuary of her imagination. Some of her escapist musings are simple, such as the one where her teacher is in love with her, or seeing someone else when she looks in the mirror, but others are creatively elaborate fantasies.
The most consistently brutal obstacle of her life is her heartless mother Mary (Excellently played by Mo’Nique, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). Mary has been so thoroughly and completely defeated by life, that she has nothing left except her anger and her desire to lash out at the only target she has…Her daughter! Not since Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” have we seen such a monstrous mother. Mary can only feel a slight semblance of control in her life when she is snuffing out her daughter’s few remaining hopes and almost non-existent self-esteem. Mary rationalizes her terrorizing of Precious by claiming that that Precious stole her boyfriend’s affections. Mary’s belief that rape is an act of affection shows just how twisted she has really become.
A light of hope appears on the horizon when Precious gets the opportunity to attend an alternative school called “Each One, Teach One”. It’s here that Precious meets her guardian angel Blue Rain (Paula Patton), a teacher who is the first person to ever see potential in the angst-ridden girl. Rain teaches Precious to read and encourages her to be all that she can be, despite the odds. When Precious is driven out of her unhappy home by the abusive Mary, Rain takes Precious in. Precious wonders how someone she hardly knows can be so kind to her while her own mother treats her like dirt.
Precious experiences friendship for the first time when she bonds with the other troubled girls from the alternative school. Each of them is broken in their own way, just as Precious is, but Blue Rain manages to find a tiny flame inside them and ignite it. The first thing she asks each of them is “What are you good at?” She starts their education from a positive point and leads them uphill from there.
There is a blissful worship of the power of education here. Learning is seen as the secret weapon to overcoming adversity and breaking through the wall of misery into the bright light of hope. Teachers are the fairy Godmothers who deliver a miraculous method of escape to the downtrodden heroine. When the students learn to write letters on the blackboard, it’s more inspiring than watching Harry Potter successfully ride a broom for the first time. Blue Rain tells the girls to write in their journals every day, even if they have nothing particular to say. Just their ability to put thoughts to paper is a valuable skill that will carry them to places they couldn’t otherwise go.
Underneath all the darkness of Geoffrey Fletcher’s award winning script is a hopeful subtext about the ability of the human spirit to overcome anything. It also serves as a warning of what happens to those who can’t. Precious and her mother are opposite sides of the coin. Mary couldn’t deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and devolved into a cold shadow of a person. Precious, on the other hand, represents survival and overcoming of bleak obstacles of the most monumental magnitude.
The cast does an amazing job here. In her first role, Sidibe is heart wrenching as the long suffering Precious. She brings such powerful pathos to the part. And Mo’Nique is the embodiment of someone who is both victim and villain. She deserves her Oscar. The biggest surprise is Mariah Carey who plays the wise and compassion social worker Mrs. Weiss. The deglamourized Carey vindicates herself after Glitter and gives a strong performance. Lenny Kravitz has a small role as a kind male nurse.
Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry were involved with this film because of their faith in the project, and their faith paid off. The combination of the strong cast, thoughtful direction and Oscar winning screenplay makes this one of the can’t-miss movies of the year.
DVD Bonus Features:
There are nine bonus extras in the DVD package.
An audio commentary by director Lee Daniels.
The look at how Sapphire’s novel “Push” was adapted to the screen.
A closer look at the cast.
Interviews with Oprah and Tyler Perry about why they wanted to be involved with this project.
A sit-down interview with Daniels and Sapphire.
Deleted scenes.
Gabourey Sidibe’s audition.
Reflections by Sidibe, Daniels and Sapphire on the story.
"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (DVD)" is on sale March 9, 2010 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Lee Daniels. Written by Geoffrey Fletcher. Starring Gabourey Sidibe, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, MoNique, Paula Patton.
