Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire - one of the best movies I've ever seen, and I thought I'd hate it

11/22/09

Precious, A+


I was expecting this film to be the typical urban mtv oprah movie type like Freedom Writers or any of that stuff. It absolutely wasn’t; this film runs much deeper than those because it’s really not THAT focused on the urban community. It’s more about personal strength. The film is very aware of all the stereotypical things it does and is more commenting on that than just following the mold. For example the teacher has some dialogue about unrelenting plots with unrelenting problems. By adding something like this it seems to me that the writers weren’t trying to show how awful things are in urban communities, they were using this fictitious backdrop (more over-exaggerated version of reality perhaps) to comment on personal strength. I think the reason I love the film so much is the writing… The writers really acknowledge everything, often times they sort of find little ways to give you guidance and talk to the audience directly. Like when Precious and her mom are having a conversation with the counselor, the counselor sort of functions as the audience, just listening and asking the questions we want to ask. Her emotions given every situation she’s in in the film mimic those that the writers probably expected from the audience. I feel like I’m just rambling… This film was written extremely well with pretty good directing and outstanding acting, I highly recommend it (which says a lot, I came in with a pretty negative attitude towards the film).