If a great movie is judged by its ability to stay with you long after you've seen it, then count Precious among them. Despite uncomfortable and disturbing themes of abuse, poverty, incest and teen pregnancy -- the film is ultimately a story of hope despite unending adversity.
The Audacity of Hope
In a lesser film, that hope would come in the form of a do-gooder character who changes the lives of their charges through a series of inspirational monologues and one-liners. Though well-meaning, these do-gooder characters are typically rooted in privilege with an outlook on life that is skewed by the bright sunshine of their own lives but without any first-hand knowledge of the circumstances in which those charges live.
In Precious, the underlying rays of hope shine through the title character -- not through verbal declarations of self-worth, but instead through cutaway fantasy sequences of her on a red carpet, on a photo shoot or singing in a choir. Each of these sequences feature the man of her dreams loving on her and standing by her as she basks in the glory of success. She is seen flipping through a photo album imagining the teacher she has a crush on confessing his love for her as well as her abusive mother encouraging her and telling her how much she is loved.
Many of these fantasy sequences occur while she is sexually assaulted by her father or abused by her always menacing mother -- effectively demonstrating our protagonist's ability to mentally escape the situation as a means of preserving her sense of hope despite awful circumstances.
Breaking the Cycle
Precious' mother simply accepted the situation she was in and exerted more effort to stay on government assistance than using it to create a better life for her daughter. Precious, however, always saw beyond those circumstances -- which is why she was able to view her enrollment into an alternative school as an opportunity instead of a punishment. Her mother, on the other hand, encouraged her to forget about school and go straight to the welfare office because her reality also had to be Precious' reality.
The birth of her second child gave Precious a fierce determination to do better for her children than her parents had done for her. Fed up with the abuse, Precious leaves her mother and turns to her school instructor. She is set up in a halfway house while she continues her education. Though better than the situation she escaped from, Precious understands that it is only a temporary situation geared toward helping her taking further steps toward a better life for her and her children.
Another discouraging blow is the final straw for Precious and she breaks down in tears at school. It's a blessing in disguise (of sorts) in that she is able to see that the love she has for herself has finally been validated by other people and that she no longer needs to seek it from the mother who never had it for her in the first place.
Beyond the Surface
Many detractors of the film cite its portrayal of a big black girl and her big black mama living in squalor but being saved by white people as stereotypical and undermining the accomplishments of so many black people over the years. Such a surface perspective reeks of provinciality. It is a slap in the face to those who live in such conditions to decry its portrayal on screen. A deeper look into the film at the underlying them of hope despite unending adversity is a universal theme that would resonate just as strongly even if Precious were about a big white girl and her big white mama.
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