(NOTE: Sorry I got this posted late...kids, snow, ya know. And yes, I am aware of the apostrophe, but come on!)
Yes, the longest journey begins with a single step. It's the day after Oscar nominations, and I begin my annual pilgrimage to watch, and write about, the Academy Award nominees. All of them. And this year, oh joy, all 10 of them! We begin with Precious.
True to Paul Brower's (my little Precious) critique below, it seems that another villain is heading toward Oscar gold.
Paul went on a diatribe about villains, claiming that not only are they easier to portray than protagonists, but also that the depth of evil within them is more vital to a film than heroism or strength.
He calls upon a few Oscar-caliber baddies. Yet, Bardem's murderous Dutch Boy in No Country and Ledger's new-age, peeling painted Joker (I have yet to see Basterds, so I cannot comment on Walz's stone-cold Nazi) have one thing in common: a resume of destruction so consummate, it is otherwordly, almost cartoonish. Bardem played a ruthless, stoic predator. Ledger played a lunatic who also dressed the part. Their reign of terror is so encompassing that the protagonists, as well as the audience, can only cower and pray. The hero's job is to stop an insanity so wicked that Susan Powter would leave town.
As a film, Precious, fell short of my expectations. Meandering and filled with generalities, it failed to stand or deliver (ahem). Though admittedly, Paula Patton is much, much, much easier on the eyes than James Edward Olmos. It also seemed to perpetuate some of the stereotypes it aimed to expose. The nurse, the teacher, the professionals...all light-skinned. The abused, the abuser, the accessories to abuse...all dark skinned. One African American critic, acknowledging this disparity in skin tone, hailed that the movie was: "a set back in cinematic portrayals of blacks." He even compared it to Birth of a Nation, a film in which the Ku Klux Klan (literally) marches in and runs out the "sex-starved darkies." Yikes.
While my assessment is less historically scathing, I found the casting for the film to be both curious and unforgivable. Was it an oversight? Or is Daniel's making some sort of indictment of color? Was he hoping we'd notice. Either way, I couldn't get over it. It eclipsed the film's theme. It even eclipsed the fact that Mariah Carey, everyone's favorite public drunk and cleavage purveyor, actually delivered a solid performance as a haggard social worker. The film is saved from racially-charged cliche by two factors.
One: Lee Daniel's inspired "fantasy" scenes that occur in Precious' imagination. Precious escapes, as we all do, in daydreams of glamour and celebrity. She escapes, as I do, to a soundtrack of early 90s hip-pop (word to Bobby B and Heavy D, the overweight lover MC). These fanatasies provide a ying to the brutual yang of Precious' reality. Bad news accumulates on Precious faster than a Cape May County blizzard. Without these scenes, it would definitely be too much for most viewers to stomach. With them, it is probably too much for most viewers to stomach.
Two: a movingly powerful performance by MoNique. Her welfare mom is a vicous villain on the level with any of Brower's allusions, even Bardem and Ledger. She's a vile and reprehensible woman. She chucks infants. She chucks televisions. She chucks pots and pans. And, she dances to disco with hairy armpits. She hurts everyone in her wake. She hurts animals, kids and old people. Her selfishness and misguidance knows no bounds. Yet, when she cries, during the climatic, final confrontation with her wayward daughter, the effects are crushing. MoNique breathes both evil and humanity into this portrait of destitution and creates a character that will haunt audiences way after the film fades. The product is a masterpiece of acting. MoNique anchors the anguish in Precious, not only the character, but also the film. MoNique deserves and likely will become only the fourth African American woman to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Hopefully, this truth about race and color will prevail where the truth of Precious failed. 
