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“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” pulls off nearly the impossible.
It’s bleak, unflinching and sometimes hard to watch. But it’s also so resoundingly hopeful and ultimately triumphant that it makes for a transcendentally moving experience.
It’s only fitting that the film is about a character who pulls off the impossible, as well. Because if anyone was doomed to fail, it should have been Clareece “Precious” Jones (astounding newcomer Gabourey Sidibe). Yet, somehow through the horrors of her life, she finds the strength to take one step at a time into the unknown.
Set in 1987 Harlem, the movie introduces us to 16-year-old Precious, a black student who is still in middle school and illiterate. She’s overweight, an outcast and dreams of being thin and white.
She’s also pregnant with her second child by her long-absent father. Her home life is miserable — she is basically a slave to her monster of a mother (Mo’Nique, in a ragingly revelatory performance), who constantly abuses her physically and mentally.
When Precious is threatened with expulsion from school — which would jeopardize her mother’s welfare checks — she is offered a chance to transfer to an alternative school, though she doesn’t even know what “alternative” means.
Though her mother forbids her to go, Precious quietly seeks out the school and stumbles into a class for other “troubled girls.”
From there, she slowly forms a surrogate family with the other misfit students and a kind yet tough teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton).
After that, Precious slowly comes into her own, meeting regularly with a dedicated social worker (Mariah Carey, hardly recognizable without makeup), and writing in a journal about her life.
But a violent confrontation with her mother leaves Precious out on the street with her new baby — until Ms. Rain helps her get back on her feet.
While we feel unrelenting pity for Precious, we never feel manipulated, thanks to Sidibe’s quietly fierce presence. Even when she’s simmering with rage, her eyes and actions show us the childlike hope inside.
In her most harrowing moments, she finds solace in beautiful dream sequences where she is the popular girl, the model, the star, the thin blonde in the mirror. It’s wonderfully creative and unexpected.
“Precious” is surprising on many levels. It features atypical dramatic actors in Sidibe and Mo’Nique, a comedian who has created one of the most horrifying screen mothers of all time. Both are Oscar-worthy. And it juggles brutality and optimism almost simultaneously.
Credit director Lee Daniels for astutely walking this tightrope, giving us profoundly inspiring moments amid the grief. His tale is tragic but soars.
We feel like we’re witnessing something beautiful in “Precious” — and as the character herself eventually learns, we are.
