Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
2009
(based on 6 user reviews)
Official Site: www.weareallprecious.com
Director: Lee Daniels
Producer: Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness, Lisa Cortes and Tom Heller
Cast: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd and Xosha Roquemore
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I knew as a middle school reading teacher and a woman of color that I needed to see this movie but knew nothing about it other than having seen the movie trailers. I have friends who have read the book but did not ask them what to expect from the movie (and even so how could they know without having seen the movie as I rarely find movies based on books are even half as good/rich). So I went into the film with a certain understanding of what I would be witnessing. I knew that the title character had been battered and abused but did not read the reviews to know/understand the gravity of the abuse or the extent of the abuse. The movie is magnificent and the actors did an amazing job, but I wish I would have known exactly what I was walking into. As an adult, I am having trouble processing the extent to which the world has betrayed Precious. She admits that her father raped her and fathered her first child, why was she not removed from her home at the age of twelve when she had her first child? Why hasn't anyone recognized the amount of abuse she has been victim to? And while I am not excusing the abuse she suffers at the hands of her father, her mother made me cringe. I felt nauseous during the scene when sexual molestation at the hands of her mother is simply implied. This is a great film, but there must be dialogue around and about the film to support its power and its message. I, as a teacher in a large urban city with low income minority students, must bare the weight of the responsibility for our children who go unseen, ignored. After seeing the movie, I went and purchased the book. I read it in a two hour sitting. The movie follows the book extremely closely.
This is an important film, and I want to encourage people to see it. There are lots of funny moments and lots of heartbreaking moments. Perhaps that is why I feel I need to see the movie again, it was very much a roller coaster ride, and I am trying to process it.
See the movie, but beyond seeing the movie, digest the movie.
To JR Jones: Is this a negative review? Because RottenTomatoes has it down as negative... you should consult them about it.
To chicagoteacher:
"[A]s a middle school reading teacher" you should have read the book beforehand.
LOLFactor10: Thanks for the heads-up. Ironically the Metacritic site says I've given PRECIOUS a perfect score of 100 points!
I'm not above scoring movies--I occasionally supply star ratings to Film Comment and letter grades to IndieWIRE--but I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to invest my time in monitoring Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, or any other site that presumes to take one of my written reviews and turn it into a ranking alongside a lot of other reviewers. If they want to do that, that's their business, but I don't consider it valid, so I don't want to get involved in the process.
This is a dose of reality delivered in the form of a kick in the balls. Don't go unless you are prepared to deal with life as you have never experienced it before. The acting is superb and delivers the realities of life at the bottom of the pit.
3 & 3/4 Stars. This is a great, not a perfect movie, yet superior to most available to us in the USA. This is a very real story that shows the effects of internalized oppresion, post colonial fratrecide and the stigma of loneliness and self worth which is very common in our country. The issue here is that we see it easiest in poor people. The movie lacks to take the opportunity to show you this behind a notion, "those poor people." I heard NPR interviews of the cast, author and creators of the movie and they all shared a theme of using this film as tool to start healing within their community. I applaud this, yet feel concern for the lack of effort showing why the characters suffered so much, those that molded the main characters reactions and future actions. Revisiting The Shawshank Redemption the other day, I returned here to the theme of Education not being the worth of knowledge, but the worth of action. I liked this in Precious. This is not a five star movie,which one is there really? My score was reduced due to the hype of the brutality in this movie. See Pixote, Los Olvidados, even Kiss of the Spider Woman (reminded me most of Precious), Baise Moi, Irreversible, etc. they inflict sharper still. Don't look for this movie for the shock factor, but for those not used to such stimuli (most USA audiences) this will go for your neck. Look for this as a glimpse to a world (most US citizens with access to see films like these) you won't get to know beyond the presumptions of guilt or disgust you may feel when you are exposed to it. On the flip side, I appreciate this director taking in magical realist approaches overtly used internationally and exposing it to our public, the Italian sequence was enjoyable.
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