Friday, November 13, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW
Precious
Tales Of An Embattled Cinderella In Harlem
Gabourey Sidibe stars as the charismatic and traumatized
Clarieece "Precious" Jones in Lee Daniels' film "Precious: based on
the
best-selling novel by Sapphire".
Lionsgate
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Friday, November 13, 2009
Powerful, memorable performances define the film festival-award winning "Precious",
Lee Daniels' stunning effort
based on Sapphire's best-selling novel Push. Mr. Daniels'
skilled direction of this hopeful and heartbreaking film is replete with an
arresting collection of profound images that crystallize the title character's state of
mind, and it is often a living hell.
Precious (played impressively by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) lives in Harlem in
1987 and is trapped. Sixteen, pregnant and already a single mother, she's
illiterate, overweight and barely surviving in a world of cruel young men, an
abusive father and a mother that only a mother could love. As the mother
of Precious Mo'Nique is almost certain to be remembered at Oscar time.
Her
performance as Mary is as chilly and frightening as any work on the big screen
this year. She's the personnification of tough love at its toughest.
Mr. Daniels (who directed "Shadowboxer" and produced "The Woodsman" and the
Oscar-winning "Monster's Ball") builds an unapologetic atmosphere of
wretchedness and depair, and one can't help being angry and saddened at the
horror Precious endures. It is tempting at times to think that Mr.
Daniels, who caught heat from some over Halle Berry's character in "Monster's
Ball", is presenting an obese black woman as a negative, perpetual object of
ridicule and subjugation, but one needs to look deeper at the tenderness and
sincerity of both the filmmaker's aspirations and the main character's
yearnings to
understand the complexity and beauty of what at times is a striking story of
insipiration.
In many ways Precious sees beyond herself and Mr. Daniels trafficks less in
stereotypes than he might in veiled color-coding that depicts almost every
lighter-shaded black character in the film as a benevolent figure and most all
darker-skinned blacks (save Precious) as destructive or bad personas. Of
course, life offers
shades of bad and good in all people, and Mr. Daniels perhaps best offsets a crude slant
with an unmistakable fact: the "dark and lovely" title character of
this film generally embraces rather than
hates herself.
Among the guardian angel types surrounding Precious are Paula Patton and Mariah Carey, who here sounds
like Whoopi Goldberg in her role as a child services representative. Ms. Patton is especially affecting as Miss Rain, Precious's remedial
reading and writing schoolteacher. There's an ideal of beauty fighting
to soar amidst the ruins
of a harsh life, an ideal that Miss Rain believes in
so strongly and we feel it as deeply as she does. For her work Ms. Patton
deserves the same recognition that Mo'Nique will undoubtedly receive.
On the page, Geoffrey Fletcher adeptly captures the inner ear of Precious in his
screenplay and includes many lines of humor as a respite from some of the
adversity. Miss Sidibe is a natural presence, as real a performer as any
decorated veteran. Playing Precious gives the first-time feature film
actress a stage which she commands in an elegant and humble way. Andrew
Dunn's cinematography is sharp, alternating deep, grimy tones of horror with
angelic bright lights of transition and possibility.
As in prior films Mr. Daniels is proficient at calibrating and
balancing the competing interests of anguishing moral dilemmas, and with
"Precious" he strikes while the iron is scorching hot, smashing together forces
of nature and cruel human circumstance and lacing them with taboo and an
unwavering energy. There's a gentility to both the embattled Cinderella of
this film and to the filmmaking process that Mr. Daniels creates, even though Dante
would heartily approve of the inferno of tragedy and pain that crackles so vividly here.
Executive producers: Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.
"Precious" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for
child abuse including sexual assault, and pervasive language. The film's running time is
one hour and 50 minutes.
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.
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