‘Precious’ showcases must-see performances Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique stand out in this flawed yet moving drama
REVIEW By Alonso Duralde Film critic msnbc.com contributor updated 5:55 p.m. MT, Wed., Nov . 4, 2009
As we head into Oscar season, “Precious” is the kind of movie that’s going to draw praise from many quarters while forming the basis for a lot of political and sociological arguments.
Conservatives will no doubt use the film to complain about the welfare state, feminists will debate whether or not the lead characters have a victim mentality, and already one legendarily argumentative African-American film critic has accused the film’s black director, Lee Daniels, of casting light-skinned actresses in sympathetic roles while casting the villains with darker-complected performers.
Once all is said and done, however, there’s still the movie itself to be considered, and while “Precious” isn’t perfect, it’s a moving drama that gives veteran performer Mo’Nique and first-timer Gabourey Sidibe the opportunity to create indelibly-etched characterizations.
Teenager Precious Jones (Sidibe) spends a lot of time fantasizing about being a model or singer or movie star, and who can blame her — in real life, she’s a physically and sexually-abused girl who has given birth to one child and is pregnant with another, both the product of incestuous rape. Her mother Mary (Mo’Nique) constantly belittles her, throws things at her and commits various other stripes of child abuse.
Expelled from her old school for being pregnant, Precious is sent to an alternative school where she meets kind and dedicated teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), who helps the illiterate girl learn to read and write. Over the course of her education, Precious learns to value herself and her children, and while life never stops throwing hardships her way, she at least moves ever closer to blossoming into her own person.
Those fantasies that distract Precious from the horrors of her daily life come as something of a consolation for the audience as well; Daniels implies and hints at a lot of misery and degradation without jamming our faces in it, which ends up being far more effective than the “let me show you female suffering IN EXTREME CLOSE-UP” style of Lars von Trier (“Antichrist”).
Daniels’ direction isn’t always effective, admittedly — right after a scene in which it’s established that Precious can barely read or write, we get a dream sequence set inside an Italian neo-realist movie, complete with subtitles. (And are we to believe that ignorant Mary, whose all-day TV diet seems to consist mostly of “227” and “The $100,000 Pyramid,” would actually be watching Sophia Loren in “Two Women”?) There’s also some business about a lost notebook that feels like an unpursued plot thread, and Precious’ classmates at the alternative school are such a collection of types they’re like a platoon from an old WWII movie.
But as Pauline Kael famously noted about another abused-woman melodrama, the classic Bette Davis tear-jerker “Now, Voyager,” “If it were better, it might not work at all.” Giving this material (Geoffrey Fletcher adapted Sapphire’s novel “Push”) any kind of sheen would have turned it into an R-rated Lifetime movie. It’s the film’s very scruffiness that keeps it from being a shallow weepie.
Ultimately, though, it’s really about the intensity of Sibide and Mo’Nique, although supporting players Patton and an unrecognizable Mariah Carey (her powerful performance as a social worker officially absolves her for “Glitter”) certainly have an impact as well. Make whatever hay you want out of what this film does or doesn’t say about the black experience or living in poverty or the cycle of familial abuse, but there’s no denying the searing performances that Daniels has elicited from his fine cast.
Posts: 27369 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Betsy Sharkey does the LA Times review - pretty favorable, exults over Mo'Nique.
Kenny Turan is the lead critic; he was also on the Gotham Awards committee that did not select Precious, so there was a hint he wasn't so favorable.
'Precious' cuts deep The heartbreaking, hopeful tale of an abused, pregnant teen should not be missed.
By Betsy Sharkey film critic >>>
November 6, 2009
Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is "Precious." A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story of an obese, illiterate, pregnant black Harlem teen circa 1987 is one that you hope will not be dismissed as too difficult, because it should not be missed.
"Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" will challenge you, but it will also move you as it rocks between the horrific realities and escapist fantasies of 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones (impressive newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), with a life so besieged that a mother's rage and a father's rapes are what passes for love.
At first glance there is little that seems precious about Precious, whose 330 pounds and constant scowl is cross-the-street intimidating. But then filmmaker Lee Daniels, who is known for producing tough films on tough subjects -- "Monster's Ball" and "The Woodsman" among them -- is not about to go soft on this story.
"Push," poet/performance artist Sapphire's first novel, was a sensation when it landed in 1996 for its graphically told story of the verbal, physical and particularly the sexual abuse experienced by Precious, who narrates in such fractured English that at first it's like another language.
Working with screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, Daniels has lightened the story a few shades by creating many fantasy sequences not found in the book, which is not to say they've made "Precious" easy to watch, just easier.
In a no-child-left-behind world, Precious was lost long before she could be left. No self-esteem to speak of, she tries for invisibility. At school it's easier, no one is really interested. At home, she's got a soul-destroying nightmare of a mother who has made Precious her project. Played to fearless and godless perfection by Mo'Nique, Mary spends her days in front of the TV while hurling a steady stream of invective -- along with the occasional frying pan -- in her daughter's direction.
Hope should not exist in all that despair, but Precious turns out to be an odds-defying storm that batters the emotions, shakes the soul and still manages to put a silver lining on the blackest of clouds in ways you might not have thought possible.
When the school counselor discovers Precious is pregnant, the story begins its painful descent into the world of America's underclass. There is no safety net for Precious -- her family, social services and the educational system have all failed her.
Like the book, the dialogue is graphic and politically incorrect. Precious' first child, a daughter, is called Little Mongo, because of her Down syndrome. When the teenager finds one of her teachers is a "straight-up lesbian," she says so before going on to list all the things homosexuals haven't done to her. With Mary, meanwhile, it's not so much the words themselves that shock, though it sometimes seems her vocabulary doesn't extend beyond four-letter words, but the molten lava underneath them.
Fortunately for us, Precious has a very rich and playful imagination. When bad things happen, and they so often do, the images dissolve into music video moments, or in one case a Sophia Loren film, where Precious is loved, respected and always in the spotlight. While reality is Harlem gritty, her fantasies are mostly glam and glitz and, like dreams, vanish all too soon.
This second pregnancy turns out to be her salvation, with Precious transferred to an alternative learning program. Her teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton), begins to change her life by getting Precious and the other rainbow coalition of failures in the class to write about their lives.(Xosha Roquemore as the sassy, gum-smacking Joann is a total kick).
Most of the characters are a study in restraint. Mariah Carey, sans makeup and minis, is almost unrecognizable and a pleasant surprise as the tough New York social worker who eventually gets Precious' case. Patton, who could have gone overly teary as Precious' past emerges, instead keeps pushing her to succeed, giving the sentiment when it comes, a potent spareness. That the director trusts us to find the emotional peaks and valleys on our own is one of the film's grace notes.
The power on the screen, and it is substantial, is shared by Mo'Nique and Sidibe, with the director leading them to the brink in scene after scene. Sidibe does well moving between the mumbling wall of insecurity that is Precious and the polished, preening celebrity of her dreams.
But it is the boldness of Mo'Nique's performance that sweeps you away. Her final moments are so emotionally wrenching, their cruelty so unnerving, that it should be experienced firsthand. There is an earlier scene, though, that hints at the character's wicked soul. Mary is standing alone in the living room watching a game show on TV, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She's stuffed herself into a delicate-looking tank top and leggings, their tiny blue flowers in contrast to the monster inside. She does a slow bump and grind, carefully smoothing back her hair. Lust and menace hang so heavy in the air, the devil himself would be afraid.
There was a risk in keeping "Precious" raw and unvarnished, in going in close on so many ugly truths, but it was worth it for the powerful social drama that emerged. For some there will be the worry that those truths are too difficult to see. They are not. Yes there is darkness, but there is also light.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,
I've had a nagging question that's been bothering me for a while now but I've never gotten around to asking. Maybe it's already been answered in the previous thread, but ...
Why and how did this film get saddled with a clunker of a title like "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire"? Would it have been so bad just to call it "Precious" or "Push"?
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
Originally posted by seanflynn: Betsy Sharkey does the LA Times review - pretty favorable, exults over Mo'Nique.
Kenny Turan is the lead critic; he was also on the Gotham Awards committee that did not select Precious, so there was a hint he wasn't so favorable.
'Precious' cuts deep The heartbreaking, hopeful tale of an abused, pregnant teen should not be missed.
By Betsy Sharkey film critic >>>
November 6, 2009
Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is "Precious." A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story of an obese, illiterate, pregnant black Harlem teen circa 1987 is one that you hope will not be dismissed as too difficult, because it should not be missed.
"Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" will challenge you, but it will also move you as it rocks between the horrific realities and escapist fantasies of 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones (impressive newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), with a life so besieged that a mother's rage and a father's rapes are what passes for love.
At first glance there is little that seems precious about Precious, whose 330 pounds and constant scowl is cross-the-street intimidating. But then filmmaker Lee Daniels, who is known for producing tough films on tough subjects -- "Monster's Ball" and "The Woodsman" among them -- is not about to go soft on this story.
"Push," poet/performance artist Sapphire's first novel, was a sensation when it landed in 1996 for its graphically told story of the verbal, physical and particularly the sexual abuse experienced by Precious, who narrates in such fractured English that at first it's like another language.
Working with screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, Daniels has lightened the story a few shades by creating many fantasy sequences not found in the book, which is not to say they've made "Precious" easy to watch, just easier.
In a no-child-left-behind world, Precious was lost long before she could be left. No self-esteem to speak of, she tries for invisibility. At school it's easier, no one is really interested. At home, she's got a soul-destroying nightmare of a mother who has made Precious her project. Played to fearless and godless perfection by Mo'Nique, Mary spends her days in front of the TV while hurling a steady stream of invective -- along with the occasional frying pan -- in her daughter's direction.
Hope should not exist in all that despair, but Precious turns out to be an odds-defying storm that batters the emotions, shakes the soul and still manages to put a silver lining on the blackest of clouds in ways you might not have thought possible.
When the school counselor discovers Precious is pregnant, the story begins its painful descent into the world of America's underclass. There is no safety net for Precious -- her family, social services and the educational system have all failed her.
Like the book, the dialogue is graphic and politically incorrect. Precious' first child, a daughter, is called Little Mongo, because of her Down syndrome. When the teenager finds one of her teachers is a "straight-up lesbian," she says so before going on to list all the things homosexuals haven't done to her. With Mary, meanwhile, it's not so much the words themselves that shock, though it sometimes seems her vocabulary doesn't extend beyond four-letter words, but the molten lava underneath them.
Fortunately for us, Precious has a very rich and playful imagination. When bad things happen, and they so often do, the images dissolve into music video moments, or in one case a Sophia Loren film, where Precious is loved, respected and always in the spotlight. While reality is Harlem gritty, her fantasies are mostly glam and glitz and, like dreams, vanish all too soon.
This second pregnancy turns out to be her salvation, with Precious transferred to an alternative learning program. Her teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton), begins to change her life by getting Precious and the other rainbow coalition of failures in the class to write about their lives.(Xosha Roquemore as the sassy, gum-smacking Joann is a total kick).
Most of the characters are a study in restraint. Mariah Carey, sans makeup and minis, is almost unrecognizable and a pleasant surprise as the tough New York social worker who eventually gets Precious' case. Patton, who could have gone overly teary as Precious' past emerges, instead keeps pushing her to succeed, giving the sentiment when it comes, a potent spareness. That the director trusts us to find the emotional peaks and valleys on our own is one of the film's grace notes.
The power on the screen, and it is substantial, is shared by Mo'Nique and Sidibe, with the director leading them to the brink in scene after scene. Sidibe does well moving between the mumbling wall of insecurity that is Precious and the polished, preening celebrity of her dreams.
But it is the boldness of Mo'Nique's performance that sweeps you away. Her final moments are so emotionally wrenching, their cruelty so unnerving, that it should be experienced firsthand. There is an earlier scene, though, that hints at the character's wicked soul. Mary is standing alone in the living room watching a game show on TV, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She's stuffed herself into a delicate-looking tank top and leggings, their tiny blue flowers in contrast to the monster inside. She does a slow bump and grind, carefully smoothing back her hair. Lust and menace hang so heavy in the air, the devil himself would be afraid.
There was a risk in keeping "Precious" raw and unvarnished, in going in close on so many ugly truths, but it was worth it for the powerful social drama that emerged. For some there will be the worry that those truths are too difficult to see. They are not. Yes there is darkness, but there is also light.
The LA TIMES review seems a lot better than the phrase "pretty favorable". From the first paragraph it reads at least very favorable if not a rave. The MSNBC review can be called pretty favorable.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,
Posts: 27369 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
I was reading through the other 'Precious' thread and I can't believe some of you are already dismissing this film's chances of winning BP.
I think it's way too early to dismiss this film as an "also ran Best Picture" nominee. The Oscars are later this year and I think we may see some "underdog nominees" prevail this year since there's more time to campaign and build momentum.
And yes, I think "Precious" is an underdog going into the Oscar season because films with largely African-American casts do not appeal to Oscar voters. In fact, isn't "The Color Purple" the only "black film" to receive a BP nomination?
Originally posted by DoubleD: I was reading through the other 'Precious' thread and I can't believe some of you are already dismissing this film's chances of winning BP.
I think it's way too early to dismiss this film as an "also ran Best Picture" nominee. The Oscars are later this year and I think we may see some "underdog nominees" prevail this year since there's more time to campaign and build momentum.
And yes, I think "Precious" is an underdog going into the Oscar season because films with largely African-American casts do not appeal to Oscar voters. In fact, isn't "The Color Purple" the only "black film" to receive a BP nomination?
"Sounder" was a best picture nominee with black actors Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield, both Oscar nominated, in the lead.
Posts: 27369 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by DoubleD: I was reading through the other 'Precious' thread and I can't believe some of you are already dismissing this film's chances of winning BP.
I think it's way too early to dismiss this film as an "also ran Best Picture" nominee. The Oscars are later this year and I think we may see some "underdog nominees" prevail this year since there's more time to campaign and build momentum.
And yes, I think "Precious" is an underdog going into the Oscar season because films with largely African-American casts do not appeal to Oscar voters. In fact, isn't "The Color Purple" the only "black film" to receive a BP nomination?
I think that 'Precious,' if you're going to cast it any one way, would have to be more of a tale about race and not so much about being a 'black film.'
If you take a broader view, films about race and "what it all means" have been nominated time and again, and, in the case of 'Crash' and 'In the Heat of the Night' have gone on to win Best Picture.
The print version of Tony Scott's reaction, this time in the NYTimes, quite favorable, particularly for Sidibe.
Howls of a Life, Buried Deep Within
By A. O. SCOTT Published: November 6, 2009
Claireece Jones, the Harlem teenager at the center of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” lives in a world of specific and overwhelming horror. She goes by her middle name, Precious, which seems like a cruel taunt, since nearly everyone around her thinks she’s worthless and lets her know it.
Precious’s mother, Mary, played with operatic fervor by the comedian Mo’Nique, dispenses a daily ration of humiliation and abuse. The constant verbal and physical violence she directs at her daughter would be shocking even without the monstrous crime that hangs over their dim, dirty apartment like a cloud. Precious, overweight and illiterate — and played by an extraordinarily poised first-time actress named Gabourey Sidibe — has a young daughter and is pregnant for a second time. The father in both cases, who is nowhere to be seen, is Precious’s father too.
This information is bluntly presented at the beginning of Sapphire’s 1996 novel, a first-person narrative composed in rough, stylized dialect. In Lee Daniels’s risky, remarkable film adaptation, written by Geoffrey Fletcher, the facts of Precious’s life are also laid out with unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail). But just as “Push” achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does “Precious” avoid the traps of well-meaning, preachy lower-depths realism. It howls and stammers, but it also sings.
Mr. Daniels, directing his second feature (after the vivid and eccentric “Shadowboxer”), is not afraid to mix styles and genres. In his determination to do justice to Claireece’s inner life, as well as to her circumstances, he allows splashes of fantasy, daubs of humor and floods of unabashed melodrama into the drab landscape of her struggle. Ugliness is all around her, but beauty is there too.
There is something almost reckless about this filmmaker’s eclecticism, which extends from the casting — pop stars and television personalities alongside trained and untrained actors — to the visual textures and the soundtrack music. “Precious” is a hybrid, a mash-up that might have been ungainly, but that manages to be graceful instead. It’s partly a bootstrap drama of resilience and redemption, complete with a hardworking teacher (Paula Patton) wrangling a classroom full of disadvantaged girls. It’s also the nearly Gothic story of a child tormented by the cruelty of adults, as lurid as a Victorian potboiler or a modern-day tell-all memoir.
Above all “Precious” is unabashedly populist in its potent emotional appeal — not for nothing did Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey sign on as executive producers around the time of the film’s debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January — and at the same time determined to challenge its audience’s complacency as only a genuine work of art can.
Mary, brimming with rage, thwarted love and plain meanness, is a character bound to provoke discomfort. Even otherwise misogynistic hip-hop artists will pay tribute to the heroism of African-American mothers, and to see that piety so thoroughly dispensed with is downright shocking.
Other provocations are more subtle but no less pointed. There are virtually no men in this movie. Precious’s father is glimpsed briefly in flashbacks of his assaults on her, and in the fantasy sequences that provide escape from her pain Precious hobnobs with handsome boys, but otherwise the only male character of significance is a hospital worker played by Lenny Kravitz. Otherwise, Precious’s cosmos, for better and for worse, is a universe of women: the social worker (Mariah Carey, scrubbed of any vestige of divahood); the teacher, Ms. Rain; her co-worker in the remedial education program, played by the comedian and talk show host Sherri Shepherd; and Precious’s fellow students.
These characters all can be seen as surrogate mothers, aunts and sisters, who together provide Precious with a more functional family (to say the least) than what she has at home. But their love is also enabled by institutions and government policies. An unstated but self-evident moral of “Precious,” set during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and based on a book published in the year of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, is that government can provide not only a safety net, but also, in small and consequential ways, a lifeline.
I will leave it for others to parse the truth or the timeliness of this message. But “Precious” is, in any case, less the examination of a social problem than the illumination of an individual’s painful and partial self-realization. Inarticulate and emotionally shut down, her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place, Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look. At its plainest and most persuasive, her story is that of a writer discovering a voice. “These people talked like TV stations I didn’t even watch,” she remarks of Ms. Rain and her lover (Kimberly Russell), displaying her awakening literary intelligence even as she marvels at the discovery of her ignorance.
And Ms. Sidibe, perhaps the least-known member of this movie’s unusual cast, is also the glue that holds it together. Nimble and self-assured as Mr. Daniels’s direction may be, he could not make you believe in “Precious” unless you were able to believe in Precious herself. You will.
“Precious” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has frank depictions of emotional and physical violence, including the sexual abuse of a child.
Originally posted by seanflynn: The three films that I can see that were predominantly about black characters to be nominated for best picture are Sounder, The Color Purple and Ray.
BY ROGER EBERT / November 4, 2009 **** Given By Ebert
Cast & Credits Precious Gabourey Sidibe Mary Mo'Nique Ms. Rain Paula Patton Nurse John Lenny Kravitz Ms. Weiss Mariah Carey Cornrows Sherri Shepherd
Lionsgate presents a film directed by Lee Daniels. Written by Geoffrey Fletcher, based on the novel Push by Sapphire. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (for child abuse, including sexual assault, and pervasive language).
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Precious has shut down. She avoids looking at people, she hardly ever speaks, she's nearly illiterate. Inside her lives a great hurt, and also her child, conceived in a rape. She is fat. Her clothes are too tight. School is an ordeal of mocking cruelty. Home is worse. Her mother, defeated by life, takes it out on her daughter. After Precious is raped by her father, her mother, is angry not at the man, but at the child for "stealing" him.
There's one element in the film that redeems this landscape of despair. That element is hope. Not the hope of Precious, but that of two women who want better for her. It's not that Precious "shows promise." I think it's that these women, having in their jobs seen a great deal, can hardly imagine a girl more obviously in pain.
That is the starting point for "Precious," a great American film that somehow finds an authentic way to move from these beginnings to an inspiring ending. Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, a young actress in her debut performance as Precious, says, "I know this girl. I know her in my family, I know her in my friends, I've seen her, I've lived beside this girl."
We may have seen her, too, if we looked. People often don't really look. They see, evaluate, dismiss.
Sidibe is heartbreaking as Precious, that poor girl. Three other actresses perform so powerfully in the film that academy voters will be hard-pressed to choose among them. Audiences may be hard-pressed to recognize them. The comedian Mo'Nique plays Mary, Precious' chain-smoking couch potato of a mother, treating her daughter like a domestic servant and turning a blind eye on years of abuse. Paula Patton is Ms. Rain, Precious' teacher, who is able to see through the girl's sullen withdrawal and her vulgarities, and wonder what pain it may be masking. Mariah Carey is Ms. Weiss, a social worker.
This casting looks almost cynical on paper, as if reflecting old Hollywood days when stars were slipped into "character roles" with a wink. But Lee Daniels, the director, didn't cast them for their names, and actually doesn't use any of their star qualities. He requires them to act. Somehow he was able to see beneath the surface and trust that they had within the emotional resources to play these women, and he was right. Daniels began his career by producing "Monster's Ball," in which Halle Berry shed her glamour and found such depths that she won an Oscar. Daniels must have an instinct for performances waiting to flower.
Carey and Patton are equal with Sidibe in screen impact; the film holds the girl in the center of their attempt to save her future. Why would a teacher and a social worker go to such lengths to intervene? They must see tragic victims of abuse every day.
Mary, the mother, is perhaps not a bad woman but simply one defeated by the forces she now employs against her daughter. Mo'Nique is frighteningly convincing.
The film is a tribute to Sidibe's ability to engage our empathy. Her work is still another demonstration of the mystery of some actors, who evoke feelings in ways beyond words and techniques. She so completely creates the Precious character that you rather wonder if she's very much like her.
You meet Sidibe, who is engaging, outgoing and 10 years older than her character, and you're almost startled. She's not at all like Precious, but in her first performance, she not only understands this character but knows how to make her attract the sympathy of her teacher, the social worker -- and ourselves. I don't know how she does it but there you are.
Got photos of us on my frigerator. Videos on my phone. I just can't erase em. The 1st text I ever got from you still saved in my inbox, and I read it back time after time.
Posts: 14956 | Location: Milwaukee,WI USA | Registered: September 12, 2001
