Jenice Armstrong: She's put off by 'Precious'
I LET MY curiosity get the best of me and finally saw "Precious" last weekend. I almost wish I hadn't.
I LET MY curiosity get the best of me and finally saw "Precious" last weekend.
I almost wish I hadn't.
No one should have to pay $10.50 just to walk out of a movie theater feeling down.
I don't usually mind when a movie takes me on a depressing road, even if it plunges to the depths of human depravity as "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" does. But I resent having my head poked into a sewer to watch humans behave like straight-up animals without there being a substantial payoff for my patience.
After slogging through all of that misery, I felt I deserved a happy ending. It didn't have to be a Cinderella-like, "and they lived happily ever after" finale, but [Spoiler alert!] give me a little something more than a scene in which a semiliterate, HIV-infected, morbidly obese teen mother walks off carrying her two children.
Lee Daniels' movie is set in 1987, before the days of life-extending HIV drugs such as AZT. That meant Precious' prospects were severely limited. What would happen to her kids?
Moviegoers around me were gathering their things and leaving, but I remained in my seat looking up at the screen, saying, "That's it? That's the end of the movie?"
As I left, I heard a teenager exclaim, "That was a really great movie."
Me, I felt gypped.
Director Daniels does a superb job in making audiences fall in love with his title character, played by Gabourey Sidibe. You can't help but root for Precious. You want her not only to survive her hellish existence but to ball up that big fist of hers and punch that monster of a mother, played by Mo'Nique, right in the kisser.
Daniels, who's from West Philly, trips, though, when he allows the movie to slip into offensive stereotypes and clichés. In one scene, Precious steals a bucket of fried chicken and runs with it in her arms through the streets of Harlem. What, no watermelons were available?
The casting also was suspect. Precious and her abusive parents were portrayed by darker-skinned African-Americans. The positive characters in the movie - Precious' teacher, played by Paula Patton; the social worker played by Mariah Carey, the male teacher Precious has a crush on - all have lighter complexions, or they're white.
I could be reading way too much into Daniels' casting decisions, but when you have baseball great Sammy Sosa walking around with shockingly lightened skin, it makes you wonder. At one point in the movie, Precious looks at herself in a mirror and instead of seeing her own reflection, she sees a skinny blonde.
We go to movies to escape from reality. "Precious" doesn't let you do that. It's a reminder of how ugly reality can be.
Like the reality of murdered 5-year-old Shaniya Davis from North Carolina, whose mother has been charged with human trafficking.
Or Charlenni Ferreira, the 10-year-old from Feltonville whose father and stepmother were charged with her murder last month.
I could go on and on. And what about the cases that don't make headlines?
Daniels' movie closes with this dedication: "For precious girls everywhere."
That's a part of the ending I can't quibble with.
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