Precious : Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

The movie Precious is based on the novel Push by Sapphire and I think that Geoffrey Fletcher the scriptwriter did great justice to the novel. It is 1987, and 16 year old obese, illiterate Claireece Precious Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe lives in a Harlem ghetto with her abusive mother, Mary played by Monique. Precious has been impregnated twice by her father, the physical abuse started when she was only 3. She also faces physical and mental abuses from her unemployed mother. However when the principle of her school discovers of her second pregnancy, she suspends Precious and arranges for her to attend an alternate school. Precious finds a way out of her traumatic daily life by by looking forward to attend Miss Blu Rain’s classes; gradually Miss Rain becomes her mentor. However her patience reaches the last straw when Mary deliberately drops the 3 day old Abdul, Precious’s second child by her father, the first one, a girl named Mongoloid who suffers from Down ’s syndrome. Precious finally fights back, gets her son and flees her home for good. Though life hands her out another devastating news, she is resolved to improve her life for herself and for her children and thus severs all ties with her mother; she plans to complete a GED test. Monique is the best thing in the movie. She tears up the screen and then in a climactic scene with Miss Weiss and Precious, tears our heart. She was worth the Oscar for the best supporting actress category at the 82nd Oscars. There is only one word for her – dynamite. The deglamourised Marih Carey as the social worker Miss Weiss was a revelation. Sidibe as Precious has won much appraisal no doubt but I found her too passive and too unwilling at times. Somehow her expressions and her movements were restrained. Precious is an emotional powerhouse, a triumph of bruising humour and bracing hope that deserves its place among the year’s best films.