Happiness For Blessing

I didn't want to give Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire a chance. From what I knew about the plot (a girl with a bad home life is redeemed by education), I had seen this movie before. I was partly right. There's not a whole lot in the story that differentiates it from the crowd of inspirational movies of the same ilk. There's a teacher who goes out of her way to give Precious individual attention, even though she's been left behind by the system. A social worker and a nurse fill the same roles, and because of them Precious gains the confidence she needs to take care of herself. Much of her motivation comes from her new child. It's the same old stuff. And you know what? It's a decent story. Why else would producers green light so many films with that same plot?

There are two things that make Precious stand out from all those other cookie cutter movies: the first is the way director Lee Daniels handles Precious' first person account. Daniels slips in between reality and fantasy throughout the narration and exposition of the film, to great effect. Even during the lowest moments of Precious' life (and boy, are they low), she is daydreaming about how it could be better. The dreams are vivid and somehow both far-fetched and realistic. What this allows Daniels to do is inject hope into an utterly hopeless situation without cheapening or watering down the story. I also appreciated the use of the handheld camera in certain situations to emphasize where Precious' focus was (although it tended to be distracting in parts).

The other distinctive feature of Precious is the realistic depiction of the moral ambiguity of the secondary characters. Daniels chooses not to paint the teacher and the social worker and the nurse as merely perfect selfless robots, but as normal people trapped in the system who happen to be performing extraordinary heroic acts on Precious' behalf. This ambiguity, personified especially by the performances of Paula Patton, Mariah Carey (yes, that Mariah Carey), and Lenny Kravitz (yes, that Lenny Kravitz) is what pushes Precious from good to great. 4.5/5