Precious

"Don't nobody want you, don't nobody need you. Now get your ass down to the welfare." This line of dialogue, is the most prevalent theme at the outset of "Precious". There is nothing for this girl, so much so that her mother drums it into her every day of her life.  Claireece Precious Jones has shut down. She hardly speaks, she never looks at people and she's almost totally illiterate. Her life at school is endless mockery and frustration and at home it is worse. Her mother, defeated by life, tortures Precious physically and emotionally. When Precious was raped as a child by her father, her mother was angry, not at her man but at her child for stealing him away from her. This is the desperate life that Precious leads, however there is one element of this film that redeems her environment - hope.

This film, at its core is about the power of hope. This film is a classic American story of redemption at the most painful and frustrating of odds and leads to an inspiring ending. The character is all to familiar to anybody who has suffered abuse and loneliness. Precious wants the good things - a real home, a boyfriend, a proper job.

The casting in this film is superb. Using relatively unkown actresses for the main characters and superstars as their supporters. But this is not a piece of cynical casting by director Lee Daniels. He requires them to act and in fact removes everything about Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz that even suggests star quality. He has not cast them for their names, he has cast them because of the role they beautifully fit - Mariah Carey, especially is excellent.

This film is a very traditional American story in that it is a redemption tale, however, the techniques Lee Daniels employs to make us relate to Precious feel more at home in a music video, and for this Daniels is brave. The piece deftly demonstrates the contrast of celebrity culture with the reality of poverty by using music video techniques and MTV-style editing (flash transitions, crash zooms) to show the difference between Precious' imagination of what she could be and what she is actually living in.

Daniels delicately explores the issues of prejudice and being poor and black in contemporary society. Of course, as with any issue, there are grey areas, but this piece is beautiful in the way it explains the way to escape is hard work and believing in yourself. In this respect, "Precious" is a wonderful film.

There are very few flaws with this film, however there are obvious semiotic elements, which made me feel as though the director didn't have enough faith in his own material to let the actions and dialogue speak. For instance, the apartment Precious lives in with her mother is dark with the windows closed off - just like Precious is trapped in a dark situation with no obvious way out. This felt patronising as when the curtains are opened the situation still feels as tense (if not moreso) than it does when there is no light. The director has employed a deeply cliched lighting technique usually reserved for schlock horror films to demonstrate a point, which would have been made just as effectively regardless of the lighting. The director went for an instant gut reaction rather than demonstrating the situation through character.

None of the elements I have described above stopped me from weeping with a mix of joy and sorrow at the end of this film. It is almost a masterpiece. It is very much a compelling and delightful piece and it was refreshing to see such a traditional story of redemption told in the way it was.