Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by SapphireThis movie genuinely portrays the novel of the book
Push by Geoffrey S. Fletcher of the 1996 novel Push by Sapphire which has sold 98% of its units to date. This American drama of precious was released last year in 2009 by the legendary creative director Lee Daniels who diligently and exceptionally did absolute justice in reliving the story of that novel. Basically the story revolves chiefly around (in 1987) Claireece P. "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) who lives in the ghetto of Harlem with her dysfunctional and abusive mother, Mary (
Mo'Nique). She has been impregnated twice by her father, Carl, and suffers long-term physical, sexual, and mental abuse from her unemployed mother. The family resides in a Section 8 tenement and subsists on welfare. Her first child, known as "Mongo", which is short for Mongoloid, has Down syndrome and is being cared for by Precious' grandmother, though Mary forces the family to pretend Mongo lives with her and precious so she can receive extra money from the government. After the discovery of her second pregnancy precious gets expelled from school, and she has to kill two birds with one stone. Yet somehow, the young woman still has hopes and dreams (depicted in a series of delightful fantasy sequences). She enrolls in an alternative school, where a young teacher (Paula Patton) takes her under her wing and even into her home, and visits a social worker (an excellent Mariah Carey; fellow pop star Lenny Kravitz is also effective as a male nurse) who further helps bring Precious out of the darkness. Incredibly, Precious's circumstances deteriorate even more before showing the slightest sign of improvement, and a climactic confrontation with her mother is one of the more wrenching scenes in recent memory.
As the time went on by, precious luckily finds a new lease in life when she gets helped by her new teachers Blu Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins learning to read. Precious meets sporadically with a social worker named Miss Weiss (
Mariah Carey), who learns about incest in the household when Precious unwittingly conveys it to her. Precious gives birth to her second child and names him Abdul. While at the hospital, she meets John McFadden (Lenny Kravitz), a nursing assistant who shows kindness to her. After Mary (her mother) deliberately drops three-day-old Abdul and hits Precious, Precious fights back long enough to get her son and flees her home permanently. Shortly after leaving the house, precious stops a window of a church and watches they sing. She begins to imagine herself and her dream boyfriend singing a more upbeat version of the Christmas song. Later on, Precious breaks into her school classroom to get out of the cold and is discovered the following morning by Miss Rain. The teacher finds assistance for Precious, who begins raising her son in a halfway house while she continues academically. As if it’s not enough after conceiving her second child she unfortunately got diagnosed with HIV positive but her baby Abdul is not affected.
All in all methinks that the movie was riveting and compiling at its exceptional best, such as the breed of actors, the cinematography, and the storyline definitely captured the essence of the original novel we know through the small screen.
