Don't believe the hype? When it comes to 'Precious', you better do. The most unlikely of box-office favorites, Lee Daniels' independent fimbecame the secret star of the 2010 awards season. A film that has everything going against it: A massively overweight protagonist battling with rape, abuse, illiteracy, poverty, the most brutal of mothers, two children one of whom is handicapped. The stuff tearjerkers are made of. And yet, miraculously, this is a life-affirming film. Because Precious refuses to allow the circumstances to crush her. At the height of abuse, she escapes into fantasies, becoming a film star, a model, someone desired. This opens a direction for the film to go: a slow dissolution of reality into a fake world, a protagnist losing her grip on reality.
Yet again, she and the film defy the odds. Because Precious does not only fight her hopeless reality in the realm of imagination. With a stubbornness that is as relentless as the world she comes from, she begins to shed the labels she had been stuck with, stupid, fat, useless, devoid of any talent. The silent, immovable, passive block of flesh come to life, discovers skills, personality, desire. Not in her imagination, but in her real world.
The way Daniels allows this emancipation process, this awakening to develop is so devoid of sentimentality, so completely honest, brutal at times, funny at others. There is no fingerpointing, no looking for blame, but a desire to live, to find a life for herself and her kids. Gabourney Sidibe plays Precious with a quiet, stubborn dignity that allows sympathy but not pity. That may be reserved for MoNique's harrowing portrayal of the mother, who tries to control, to dominate, to suppress and is left with nothing in the end. Or even worse, with the realization that nothing was all she ever had. That the film does not condemn her is part of the strength of this remarkable film.
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