A poignant story of human will. Review on Precious Movie

I’d read some reviews about this movie and so would have avoided seeing it but for the fact that it’s an Oscar winner. And I did well not to avoid it. This is not a high-pitched movie which is a good thing and the tone is right, more than a documentary and less than a very eventful, dramatic one. More than the plot, it’s the editing, camerawork and direction that ensure that.

I was ready to dislike this misshapen mass of a big black girl at the start. What right does this girl have to desire a swanky life full of dresses, music, love, and a hip boyfriend? And she looks so dumb! Is she an ape who doesn’t have sense and wouldn’t be any better with a better treatment than she gets in a dirty, want-stricken home at the hand of her violent, abusive, mother and a moron father who rapes her and has made her a mom of one abnormal girl and another on the way when she’s just seventeen? Is this the black girl in search for god that Shaw talked about or is she the one who can wish away her troubles and have the bluest eyes?

But that’s not it. The movie creates a bleak atmosphere of controlled tension right from the start and you start feeling anxious for this girl. She’s not dumb but intelligent, brave too, encountering the rough life of the neighborhood and a worse one at home. And beneath her passive eyes and face are desires to rise, to be loved, to be appreciated. This shows from her daydreams, shown well with a striking abruptness. This is where you find you feel for this lovely and  intelligent girl. You start wishing all turns out well. There is somewhat of a suspense about how things will end up for her. She starts getting education in a good atmosphere. A social work agency starts looking into her problems.

A healthy baby is then born to Precious but when she returns back home, there is no respite but the same vile atmosphere. So she has to leave home for the sake of her infant for whose whom she can sacrifice anything. There is a certain balance between the negative things in her life and the growing positive things—leaving her mother’s poisonous home and finding a sanctuary at a sympathetic teacher’s , friends and chance for education, even prospect for things like scholarships and higher education. She leaves home But then the balance starts tipping in favour of the negative things. Darkness increases. Some maladies have no remedies except that there is none so strong as to disease the human heart.

So this brave, beautiful girl starts a new journey of indefiniteness.