Precious has become a hit on the international festival circuit and secured nominations during this year’s award season. There has also been a backlash against the film and its character portrayals. So for the film review on Trespass I decided to give readers both for and against opinions, with mine being the affirmative and fellow reviewer, Sean Rom the negative.
FOR-
With an amazing debut performance from 24 yr old Gabourey Sidibe, and an equally good supporting cast, Precious is a film to watch and ponder. Whilst there has been criticism over the explicit and continuation victimisation of Precious by some critics, I think it is ludicrous to view Precious as a single character; her suffering comes from a collection of girls/women’s realities. Sapphire, a New-York based poet who wrote the book Push (1996), based the story on her own experiences working in Harlem teaching reading and writing.
“These people are not invisible. We hear about them every day. But they are totally misunderstood, and I wanted to show what’s behind the statistics.” Sapphire
A film that deals with incest and poverty should make the viewer uncomfortable. Lee Daniels (he produced Monster’s Ball and The Woodsman and directed Shadowboxer), the director, is not a man to shy away from taboo topics. He has given us a story full of ugliness and pain. Precious’ mother is definitely a vicious woman, but Mo’Nique gives Mary both a sense of malice and neediness, showing her to be at once tough and pathetic; no easy task.
Part way through, the film seems dangerously close to inspirational teacher mode, thankfully the brakes are put on before it slips into sentimentality. This is due to the filmmakers’ persistence in brutal realism, meaning that Precious’s life can’t go from horrific to perfect, no matter how much as a viewer you might want it to.
With impressive cinematography from Andrew Dunn (Gosford Park) and almost exclusively superb acting (even Mariah Carey), it is the subject matter of Precious that is causing dissent. I definitely have some problems with elements in the film, like the fetishism of food, with greasy shots of fried food interspersed with scenes of rape; and more significantly the representation of ownership, the notion that Precious is the storyteller, when it is Ms. Rain/Sapphire, the teacher, who is the true narrator. However, the discussions the film has engendered are proof enough that Precious needed to be made. Precious has launched a discourse in the mainstream media, which usually shies away from hard topics like abuse, incest and racial representation. I believe the film is all the better for the controversy it causes.
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