Pushing to be Precious

‘What does it mean when a protagonist’s circumstances are unrelenting?’ asks Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), the angelic English teacher in Lee Daniels’ Oscar-buzzing Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire. What, indeed, Mr. Daniels? Because his protagonist, Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an overweight, illiterate, twice-pregnant black girl from a broken home in Harlem certainly has the odds stacked against her. Daniels pulls no punches as he piles on abuse after abuse, and as human beings, we feel pity as we watch it all unfold. But he never answers his own question. The circumstances are unrelenting, but what does any of it mean?

An extremely jarring yet tempered performance by Mo’Nique as Precious’s abusive evil mother Mary is wasted because her character is never fully developed. Daniels goes for gasps as he shows teenage Precious raped and impregnated by her own father as Mary watches, Mary’s own physical and sexual abuse of her daughter and the similarly shockingly cold treatment of Precious’ first daughter, born with Down syndrome. Yet her pure evil almost feels cartoonish at times. There is no doubt that people like Mary truly exist, but what creates them? Where are her motivations? Daniels shies away from creating actual people, instead letting good and evil duke it out in an inner-city apartment. And when these abuses happen, he pulls back by cutting to Precious’ fantasyland, where she imagines herself as a glamorous model. Instead, his answer is to add more fuel to the fire.

The film deals with pedophilia, child abuse, HIV, poverty, illiteracy, self-esteem, rape, incest and teenage pregnancy. But Daniels simply throws all of these into a blender and presses the button. The result is a mishmashed pur’eacute;e that goes down feeling forced. These issues are depicted, yes, but Daniels aims to shock and manipulate more than analyze. Great art doesn’t simply remind us of social maladies, but gets to the humanity behind them. Precious plays out more like a ghetto Cinderella fairy tale. And though Daniels should get credit for going where few films dare, the plot follows the fairly standard rags-to-riches Hollywood narrative, complete with the aforementioned English-Teacher-Who-Cares, the white social worker (Mariah Carey) and the snappy comic relief (Precious’ classmates).

In a post-Slumdog world, one can imagine the suits eyeing this indie film with a hungry gaze, a train they can ride all the way to Oscarville. True, Precious doesn’t end on a feel-good Bollywood dance number, but it still feels wrong ‘-‘- a voyeuristic journey to the slums to allow whites to assuage their own guilt at past atrocities. A TV show like The Wire can do in one episode what Precious never quite achieves; not only depicting unrelenting circumstances, not only showing protagonists trapped inside them, but examining why we as a society, as human beings, allow things like these to happen. Precious seems shallow and manipulative by comparison ‘-‘- a shame, since there is clearly talent both behind and in front of the camera.