review - Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" is one of the most emotionally riveting films I have seen in years. The story is fiction, but the lives the movie portrays are all too real and that's what makes it a tough pill to swallow. Hearing about stories like these is of course a lot easier than having to live through this hell.

Set in Harlem in 1987, the films shows Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) as an obese,illiterate, sexually abused, welfare-dependent, 16-year-old junior high school student with a Down syndrome daughter and another child on the way. Both pregnancies were caused by her father. Precious' demonic welfare cheat of a mother, Mary (played powerfully by Mo'Nique), attempts to drop a television on her daughter's head after Precious and her baby roll down several flights of tenement stairs. And that is no the half of it. Mo'Nique is sure to be nominated for an Oscar. Mariah Carey's turn as a social worker is also sure to get a nomination as well. Precious did well at the Sundance Film Festival where it earned the top awards in drama, the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize.

The most wrenching scene comes late in the film where there is a confrontation between Mo'Nique's character, Mariah Carey's horrified social worker with Precious looking on. You could have heard a pin drop in the theater.

If "Precious" has a lasting cinematic legacy, it may be in inspiring people to become social workers, taking advantage of educational opportunities and hold the feet of the welfare state to the fire for institutionalizing indolence.