The last time I had a feeling like this was after watching the 9/11 movie “United 93.” That film left me with a mixture of awe and emptiness. On the one hand it is a remarkable film. On the other hand I could not imagine recommending the experience to anyone. People-watching the day the film was released; as audiences lined up with pop and popcorn in hand was a surreal and dispiriting experience. How could anyone eat popcorn while watching an accurate recreation of the horror of 9/11?
“Precious” left me with that same empty sadness. Do I appreciate aspects of the film? Yes, the acting in “Precious” is top notch. The problem is an overwhelming sadness and sense of despair that suffocates while the movie plays and lingers afterward. Like “United 93,” regardless of what's good about “Precious,” how can I recommend it?
At just 16-years-old Clarice 'Precious' Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is pregnant with her second child. Both children are born of rape; rape by Precious's own father, an abuse witnessed by her mother, Mary (Mo'nique). Precious deals with these horrors by escaping into fantasies of fame where she walks the Hollywood red carpet with her light skinned boyfriend.
At school Precious can hardly read. She has, like far too many American students, been passed along by a system ill-equipped to deal with her level of trauma, abuse and an almost genetic trait of ignorance and despair. When she finally arrives at an alternative school, where she belonged all along, it's almost too late.
At this new school Precious finds uncommon kindness from her new teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) and acceptance from her fellow alternative school classmates. Ms. Rain, like anyone else, is incapable of dealing with the Jobian ills heaped upon poor Precious but unlike so many others she doesn't try and pass the buck. The film gets its most painful, emotional moments out of Precious and Ms. Rain's scenes.
Outside of the scenes between the newcomer Ms. Sidibe and Ms. Patton, Precious plays like a horror film with Mo'nique as a strange sort of villain who begs for our sympathy in the end for the horrors she brings, an Eli Roth “Hostel” villain but with scruples. There is nothing wrong with Mo'nique's performance, it is effective and memorable; the issue is the amount of her time spent committing heinous abuse.
I understand wanting to demonstrate what Precious is up against but the repeated horrors contribute to a suffocating air of depression that does not allow audiences to feel anything else. Do you sympathize with Precious? I guess, but not in the way I'm sure is intended. Precious is meant to illicit our sympathy and like a victim in a horror movie she has our sympathy on a basic human level. Once the horrors are piled on our sympathies deepen because Ms. Sidibe is a fine actress, but at a certain point the sadness, indignity and despair suffocate any and all feelings other than severe depression. I'm not saying lighten up, I'm saying there had to be a more effective way of making the point about Precious's circumstances than bludgeoning the audience with sorrow.
I think the point that director Lee Daniels is trying to make in “Precious” is that there are girls like Precious out there and something needs to be done about it. That is an unquestionable fact. However, “Precious” the movie is far from the most effective tool for doing something about it. The series of horrors depicted in “Precious” will not send audiences home with thoughts about fighting poverty and abuse; rather they will want to rid themselves of the experience of so much forlornness and melancholy.
BYLINE:
Sean Patrick Kernan is a film critic. Check him out at: http://www.myspace.com/number1ramjamfan.
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