Precious (Based on the novel "Push" By Sapphire)

Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire

By Jonathan Fisher, February 13th, 2010

This is a movie that will sort out the men from the boys. Precious is confronting, harrowing, and rather depressing. Even the cautiously optimistic ending has an underpinning of melancholy about it. The main character, despite her growth, is still a 16-year-old HIV positive incest survivor with two children by her own father. I think there is a stark difference between real movie enthusiasts and those who just like watching movies. Those that just like watching movies may want to steer clear of Precious because, while it reflects very deeply and truly a brutal reality, it is not a particularly fun experience. But people like Precious do exist. We’ve all seen them, and we’ve all probably dismissed them at some point of our lives. Precious (Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire) encourages us to re-evaluate.

The movie is set in Harlem in 1987, and when we meet Clarice Precious Jones (Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe), it’s difficult not to be shocked by her appearance. Morbidly obese gives you only a vague impression of her physical state. Her face is so puffed up that her eyes are almost slits, her body so shapeless that if we didn’t know already, it would be difficult to assume her gender. She attends a lower-class school in Harlem, and is suspended for falling pregnant. At the age of 16, she already has one child. What the school principal doesn’t know before she suspends Precious is that both children were fathered by Precious’s own father (the conception of one is illustrated in a brief, but horrific flashback).

After Precious is suspended, a social worker offers her a place at an alternative school. Precious begins classes at the alternative school under the guidance of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), a softly-spoken woman with a compassionate heart and delicate features. Precious learns to read and write, and slowly learns that she isn’t worthless and that she doesn’t deserve everything that she is put through. The basic outline of this sub-plot reminded me vaguely of those cookie-cutter ‘inspirational teacher’ movies. But here there is real compassion and wisdom in the teacher-student relationship, and the film doesn’t indulge in overly manipulative emotional pay-offs that it hasn’t earned.

Precious’ home life is, if possible, worse than her school life. She lives with her mother (Mo’nique), a hateful, bile-filled, near-sociopathic person who forces Precious to eat fatty foods, constantly tells her how worthless she thinks she is, and even sexually molests her. Mo’nique, an actress previously completely unknown to me, apparently has made a career starring in low-budget broad comedies. Her performance in Precious astounded me. The intensity in her scenes with Sidibe was confronting, to say the least, and her final scene in which she opens up to a social worker (played by Mariah Carey, surprisingly very good) calls for her to hit many emotional points that I think most actors working today would be unable to pull off effectively.

Precious has been subjected to a critical firestorm over in the US. Some critics feel that it is a telegraphed, soulless experience that only gets by on the power of its subject material and a couple of very fine performances from Sidibe and Mo’nique. David Edelstein writes in his review of the film: “It (the movie) somehow skips over the part where Precious actually learns. When she tells us, in voice-over, that she won a literacy prize, you may think you missed something. Precious jumps from signpost to signpost. Set in 1987, it features obligatory images on TV of Reagan and Ollie North—but also, for hope’s sake, photos of Oprah Winfrey (thinner than she was at the time), who signed onto the film as co-executive-producer after it was made. The elements of Precious are powerful and shocking, but the movie is programmed. It is its own study guide.”


I don’t like to make a habit of reviewing other people’s reviews, but I think it’s important to address Sidibe’s performance. It is true that we don’t see her open up to others all that much throughout her journey. That’s because Precious has almost completely shut down from the world, and who could blame her? It is only through several fantasy sequences that we get a glimpse at the girl behind the façade. She is so closed off from everything that it is only at the very end of the film that we get the impression that she might be able to function in the real world -- and even then, the suggestion is that her improvement has so far been only a marginal one.

Despite all the downers, Precious actually has moments of humour. One fantasy sequence shows Precious and her mother evoke a scene from Vittorio de Sica’s Two Women, a sequence that I found amusing despite its implications (the fantasy is a kind of re-enactment of a scene immediately preceding it in which Precious’ mother force-feeds Precious pig’s feet and deep fried chicken). A male nurse, played by Lenny Kravitz, also has a couple of scenes that managed to bring a smile to my face, despite the disastrous surroundings of his role.

So there it is -- Precious is a deeply powerful film, replete with fine performances, fine writing, and fine film-making. But it is an innately depressing story. I’ve done my job. I’ve described the movie, how I reacted to it, and have given it some context. It is a great movie, but I feel that those who don’t go to the movies purely to switch off probably know already that they won’t be attending this one. Please don’t be put off by the trailer or the source material. If you give her a chance, Precious might grow on you as much as she grew on me.

Editor’s note: The film was initially intended to be named Push, after the novel it is based on. Around the same time Precious was released, a blockbuster named Push was also showing, hence the name-change to the awkward sounding Precious (Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire).