I think it is important that you listen to my advice: Don’t see Precious alone. I did and it was the biggest mistake of my life. I cried so much that I needed someone, anyone to hold me. At one point in the movie I looked down the aisle and saw a woman of about 60 sitting alone and I thought, “Maybe she’ll hold me.”
She was crying too, so I assumed she could also use a warm hand or soft body to nestle against. But alas, I did not go. Instead I stayed in my seat alone, with no one to comfort me but my tears.
Precious is a tearjerker. It’s a triumphant return to the days of drama. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film with the power this film has.
I’m weeks behind every other person in seeing this film but it was worth the wait. I was turned off by the fact that Mariah Carey was in it and unfairly judged it. Hell, I unfairly judged Carey, who actually turned in a great performance as a sympathetic social worker to Precious, the title character, played amazingly by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe.
Precious is the hard luck story of a girl growing up in Harlem to abusive parents. She’s undereducated and in danger of becoming nothing more than a statistic before she finds refuge in an alternative school called Each One. Reach One.
The film is based on the book Push by Sapphire. I haven’t read the book but if it is anything like the film, I’m sure it will make me cry.
The film hits on so many issues from incest and rape to illiteracy. It teeters on the precipice of extreme melodrama at the end when we learn that Precious has contracted HIV from her father. However, Lee Daniels, the director, handles the plethora of issues in a sensitive, and yet responsible way that the melodrama is acceptable.
A lot of attention has been given to Mo’Nique for her dramatic turn as the mother of Precious but I think the real breakout star is Sidibe. This was apparently the first film for which she ever auditioned. My only fear is that she won’t be able to find roles as moving as this and she may have peaked in her first role.
Bottom Line: See this film before it leaves the theater. If you wait until it hits DVD you’ll have the power to pause it when it gets too hard to watch and that would be a outrage. You have to watch it from the beginning. You must follow Precious, non-stop, through the darkness of her life. Only then will you truly understand and feel the light she finds at the end of the tunnel.
