Editorial
Front Page - Friday, December 11, 2009
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
Looking back over the last few issues of this newspaper, I’m beginning to think I should rename this column “The Grumpy Critic.”
I haven’t liked many of the movies I’ve seen lately. While there are promising new releases in theaters, such as “Blind Side,” the limited amount of time and space I have prohibit me from reviewing every new film, so I pick and choose based on random criteria. I selected “Precious” over “Old Dogs” and “Ninja Assassins” for this week’s column because I was hoping it’d be as good as other critics claim. On Rotten Tomatoes, 91 percent of the reviewers the Web site tracks gave it thumbs up, including the inventor of the thumb, Roger Ebert.
Then, as “Precious” ended, I realized I fell squarely in the minority. I was on the borderline until the last scene, but the movie’s final moments pushed me over the edge. And I felt terrible. How could I slam a film packed with good intentions? Simple: I have to be honest.
“Precious” will take you into a world you’d rather not think about. Once you get a glimpse of the life of its central character and realize she represents untold numbers of abused youth, you might wish you’d made a different choice at the ticket window. There’s a burden that comes with seeing the movie, and it’s not easy to shake.
Precious is the name of a 16-year-old girl growing up in Harlem. She’s overweight, illiterate and pregnant with her second child. The father of her children is her father as well. We see him in a flashback, a greasy drop of sweat that dripped off society’s underbelly, raping Precious. To escape, she slips into a fantasy world where she’s a glamorous movie star at a world premiere.
I was grateful Precious took me there because the rape scene is repulsive. It’s also just the tip of the iceberg, as her mother, Mary, is angry at her for “stealing her man” and heaps unimaginable emotional and physical abuse on her. In one unforgettable scene, she gathers together every phrase you could use to make a person feel worthless and hits Precious full on with the brute force of her hatred. The dialog is intense, like the words festered in Mary’s bones before making their way to her lips.
Throughout verbal beating, though, Precious just stands there, looking at her mother without a hint of emotion. There comes a point when you don’t feel the blows anymore.
Through various circumstances, Precious ends up at an alternative school, where she comes under the tutelage of Ms. Rain. Insightful, smart, determined and patient, Ms. Rain gradually pulls Precious out of her stupor.
Unfortunately, the abuse Precious suffers is relentless and the social services on which she subsists do nothing to lift her above her circumstances. Then, just as she’s becoming aware of her need to make her own way, she receives news that crushes any hope of her making a breakthrough. The story of Precious begins in desolation and ends in despair.
My dislike of the film, however, has nothing to do with its harsh realism or challenging subject matter. I don’t mind being black and blue when I come out of a movie. Rather, I was disappointed to see that the director, Lee Daniels, relied too heavily on clumsy improvisation, and in doing so weakened the project.
It’s obvious many of the scenes in “Precious” were made up on the spot, with the actors winging it. This process occasionally worked, as when Precious jokes around with her classmates after giving birth to her son. The ad-libbing feels natural.
Sadly, there’s nothing genuine about the scene in which Mary tells a social worker how the abuse of Precious began. Up to that point, the actress in the role, Mo’Nique, has delivered one of the bravest performances I’ve seen in a movie. Mary is a monster, and Mo’Nique has allowed all of her character’s ugliness to ooze out of her skin. I won’t be surprised if she wins an Oscar for her efforts.
If she does, though, the award will be for the moments preceding the final scene, in which she stumbles her way through a half-baked story that brings the movie to an unsatisfying conclusion. I was expecting an ending that matched the emotional gut punch of the rest of the film, but watching the final scene is like seeing wet clay hit concrete. It just lands and goes “splat.”
While “Precious” deserves praise for how it explores urgent social issues within the framework of a tragic story, and for its performances, I wish Lee had taken a firmer hand with certain crucial scenes.
E-mail David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.
com.
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