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Precious
Lightning rod
2009
Review: November 17, 2009
Director: Lee Daniels
Starring: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz
Probably not.
THE SETUP:
Obese black girl works to better her horrible life through education.
DISCUSSION:
It seems that a favorite new national pastime lately is calling someone racist, with calling them insensitive to [insert affliction/minority here] running a close second. It’s also a delightful activity to twist someone’s every phrasing into evidence of his or her simmering hidden prejudices, and then slam them for what you THINK they REALLY meant. For example, David Edelstein of New York Magazine got slammed for expressing the idea that, since most of what appears on movie screens are thin, gorgeous models, it’s a bit of a shock to see 300-pound Gabourey Sidibe on screen, for which he got a lot of grief that he must hate fat people so much that he even finds the sight of one shocking! I wasn’t really all that interested in this film until I started reading all this invective, then suddenly I became possessed.
Personally, I’m with R.W. Emerson when he says “politeness ruins conversation.” And, speaking as a gay person, I think jumping down everyone’s throat for every tiny thing they say is counterproductive to the larger goal of reducing prejudice—because if people can’t speak up, their prejudices can’t be aired and discussed. If they just clam up because someone’s going to throw a power trip over their parsing of a certain phrase, their prejudice is just going to remain inside, hidden and unchanged.
You should also know up front that you’d better believe I am racially prejudiced. Sure am! Furthermore, my viewpoint is that EVERYONE [even those of racial minorities] is racially prejudiced to some degree, and those who say they aren’t are in denial. All that said, let’s get down to it! We open with credits in the poor English that the novel is apparently written in, translated just below them, and then the epigraph: “Everything is a gift from the universe.” Even swine flu, Hurricane Katrina and HIV! Thanks, universe! Then we learn that this takes place in the Harlem of 1987. We see Precious in her home life with her abusive mother, who hits her with a frying pan and tells her that she’s stupid and worthless. These opening scenes contain a lot of handheld camera work and abrupt, mood-heightening zooms. We learn that Precious is pregnant with her second child by her father, who is shown raping her in a flashback, during which Precious zones out into a fantasy world in which she is an admired celebrity. This is the only time her father is seen in the entire movie. After blurting about the abuse at home to a counselor at school, she is offered a place in an alternative school. Her mother is concerned that if anyone looks too deeply into her finances she will lose her welfare payments. She tells Precious “School ain’t gonna help you none ‘cause you can’t learn shit. Ain’t nobody want you, ain’t nobody need you.”
Precious goes to the alternative school, where she is taking a class that will prepare her to take the GED—basically by teaching her to read and write. There she meets the other students, and her teacher, Ms. Rain, played by Paula Patton. While at the board, one of the other girls calls her fat, and Precious slaps the girl on her way back to her seat. Ms. Rain kicks out the girl who called her fat—not Precious—and one suspects this may be among the first times Precious didn’t receive the blame for a situation like this. Her mother criticizes Precious for thinking she’s high and mighty now, “just because he give you more babies than he gave me.” In her mirror, Precious fantasizes about herself as a skinny white woman with long blonde hair. She says she wishes she had a handsome, light-skinned boyfriend.
There is an already-infamous scene in which Precious steals a bucket full of fried chicken, eats the entire thing, then later throws it up [not purposely] in an office at school. Her other daughter, who they call “mongo” for ‘mongoloid’ because she has Down syndrome, is brought over by her grandmother just in time for the welfare case worker to come over. She puts on a wig, hides her cigarettes, and calls her grandchild sweet endearments as she lies about how hard she’s been out looking for a job. As soon as the worker leaves she throws the baby down on the couch.
SPOILERS > > >
Soon it’s clear that Precious is getting pretty excited about learning to read and write, and is making great progress, and feeling pride. She is reading in front of the class when she goes into labor, and when all her classmates show up at the hospital, one can see that these have become her new group of friends, who she is laughing and chatting with in a way we haven’t seen her do with anyone else. When Precious returns home, her mother asks to hold the baby, then drops it, physically attacking Precious [there’s a lot of tension that they might trip over or fall on the baby] and blaming her for “taking my man.” Precious grabs the kid and leaves, whereupon her mother drops the TV down the stairs on her—although it barely misses. This is one of the moments in the film that doesn’t ring true, as her mother is shrewd enough to realize that if she broke her TV, she would have nothing to do in life. Anyway, Precious leaves, and spends the evening homeless.
In the morning, Ms. Rain tries to find a shelter for her, and ends up taking her in herself, whereupon Precious realizes that she’s a lesbian, and we have an Important Speech about how lesbians never abused her, and an amusing line about “they talk like TV channels I don’t watch.” Soon Precious is installed in a halfway house, which is where she really starts to blossom. She is advancing in reading and writing [at an 8th grade level, after starting at 2nd], enjoying it, and enjoying the additional freedoms education offers. Things are going well until Mom drops by and lets Precious know that her father has HIV, and it’s soon revealed Precious does, too. There’s a big tearjerker scene just after as Precious laments the hand fate has dealt her—and recall that this is 1987, so there is no HIV medication yet. By the way, her mother says she herself couldn’t have it, because she and dad never did it in the ass.
It all comes to a catharsis as Mom has to come in and meet with Precious’ counselor, Ms. Weiss. When she shows up, you have a moment where you say “Wait a minute, is that Mariah Carey?” All de-glammed and looking like a real social worker? Sure is, folks. But that moment is nothing compared to the shock a second later when you say “Wait—wait—is she actually WORKING in this role? Working really well?” And yeah, I have to say she is—which will be a shock to anyone who saw Glitter. But I have to give it up to Mariah here. She was not just passable, she was GOOD. Mom gives a long speech in which she describes how Precious started being sexually abused by her father when she was three—and with mom right there, but doing nothing. She reveals her heartbreak that her husband chose her child as a sexual partner over her, but did nothing about it in order to keep him there. Precious tells her she sees now who she is, there’s no way she’s coming back to her, and she takes her two babies [mom brought the other one] and walks down the street to continue her new, independent life.
< < < SPOILERS END
Okay, so now the discussion. The movie itself comes out as very straightforward. It’s all right there on the surface, point A to point B, no subtext, no directorial tricks you can’t understand immediately, very conventional Lifetime self-empowerment-through-education tale that just happens to be extremely gritty. So I think almost everything interesting about this movie is the discussion going on outside of the movie itself.
And that seems to center around the portrayal of Precious’ home life, particularly her mother. It is definitely a Rush Limbaugh-esque picture of ignorant inner-city blacks living off government assistance that they have cheated the system for, not working or trying to find work, eating awful food and getting fat and soaking up public health money, etc., and it seems that the film is primarily notable simply for showing this. Some out there say “At last a film that shows it how it is!” Others say “Showing this portrayal only confirms what a lot of whites already think about lower-class blacks!” And this film [and, I imagine, the novel, which I haven’t read] does seem to delve with particular gusto into the worst imaginable aspects of lower-class inner-city black life, reveling in loading on every horrible circumstance. The other thing that must be said is that only a black filmmaker could make this movie, since it seems that it is against the law for any white person to say anything in the least bit critical of any black person for any reason. In the same way that Bill Cosby suggested that perhaps inner-city blacks should learn to speak correct English and black fathers should stay to take care of their offspring—and received scathing criticism from the black community—or Obama suggested that black fathers also stick around and young black boys pull their pants—comments Jesse Jackson said he would like to castrate Obama for—this movie wouldn’t be possible if it didn’t spring from black artists.
I think the answer—boring as it is—is to realize that these characters do not represent every single black person alive and this movie is just one portrayal of one set of circumstances that are not shared by every inner-city black person. Precious’ mom is a particularly horrible monster—maybe there are people out there just as bad or worse, but it seems unlikely there are too many. Similarly, it seems unlikely that Precious herself would be such a saint who only wants to selflessly care for those darn kids [from what I understand, the novel is a bit harder on Precious]. It seems that the main point of the movie is to deliver a power-of-education message in the lineage of films like Born Yesterday or Educating Rita, but specific to extremely lower-class blacks. It all comes down to that, and while it is a fairly decent and moving power-of-education movie with good performances, controversy aside, that’s all it is.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Truthfully, you could skip it and experience no appreciable downside.
