In “Precious,’’ Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) usually comes home from school and prepares dinner for her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), in their Harlem apartment. Mary could probably make dinner herself. But it’s easier for her to throw the dinner out or at Claireece if she’s not the cook. Mary curses at Claireece, who is dark-skinned, overweight, and, at 16, having an impossible time making it of out of middle school. Claireece, who prefers to be called Precious, stands there and absorbs Mary’s tirades, as if it were her daughterly duty. She did the same when her father raped her, twice leaving her pregnant and Mary violent with jealousy. The relationship doesn’t change. But the younger woman realizes it needs to.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Joy amid the pain: ‘Precious’ examines the struggles and strength of an astonishing teen
This movie catalogs a wealth of human ugliness. It’s even been made to look ugly, presumably to underscore the horror movie that is Precious’s life. (Mary castigates her daughter from a stairwell just like Piper Laurie did to Sissy Spacek in “Carrie.’’) But “Precious,’’ in its own way, is a work of astonishing joy. Avoiding the conventional tricks of lifting an audience up, the movie looks into this girl’s wide, brown face and her bleak little life and sees, despite everything, a reason to live.
Director Lee Daniels brings to the screen a vitality that cuts against the awfulness we hear about and see, without daring to dull a thing. Living, the director seems to say, means being alive to savor the good and to feel the bruise of the bad. So his camera usually gets right up close to the sex and the assaults, but it also transports us deep inside Precious’s psyche, where her shame commingles with her fantasies. A blond white girl stares back at her in the mirror. In her red-carpet daydreams, she sounds like Nicole Kidman, and in the photo shoots of her mind, she’s Naomi Campbell. In these daydreams, her companion is a cute, creamy-looking Nuyorican boy. And yet Precious’s fairy godmother arrives in the opening scene, and it’s Susan Taylor, the former editor of Essence, who made it her mission to remind black girls that they’re beautiful.
Absurdly, the film’s full title is “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.’’ The movie is set in 1987, and I don’t think there was a theater back then whose marquee could hold all that title. Sapphire’s 1996 book was a work of point-blank dread. Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher has streamlined the graphic degradation without making the usual compromises. Like the book, the movie still leaves you feeling like Mike Tyson just knocked you out. And you can practically smell Newports and fried food wafting from under the theater seats.
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