It's about an unfortunate young woman who lives in the ghetto and leads a bleak and horrible life. She has aids. Her father raped her. She's pregnant/became pregnant several times. Her mom is evil and beats her. She's also really fat. And school kids probably laugh at her.
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Reviewers are calling it oscar-worthy. And they're saying that Mariah Carey has totally reversed the popular opinion formed by Glitter.
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Have you read the book, Clive? It's a good book. Painful and agonizing and sad, but very good. If they manage to make the movie as good as the book... perhaps it will be worth seeing.
It kind of parallels books like America and the Color Purple.
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I should see it if I ever get money. The girl playing Precious has really pretty dark skin. I never get why folks think dark skin isn't pretty. I'm kind of brown sugar coloured myself.
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Syntesthesia, have you read anything else Clive has written?
What's interesting is, this is one topic where it probably WILL actually be worth preserving the original intent (to discuss Precious) as opposed to derailing into something about cookies or cheese or the authenticity of chinese food.
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It actually sounds pretty good. I might see it if I ever get a chance to see anything that doesn't involve talking animals or rainbow rocks (if you know what I mean - you understand the painfulness of that experience!).
I just realized, when reading Syn's post, how funny it is that I have such distinct mental images of people on here - ones that probably don't jive at all with how they actually look. The only one I think I've ever seen a picture of is KQ.
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Synesthesia--I read you have a job now, right? I'm happy for you. I know you really were struggling there, for a while.
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Clive, have you read any of the reviews? The ones I have seen give it plenty of praise.
Sure, it's not Finding Nemo. But hard stories and tough experiences make good cinema, in the right hands.
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: This looks like a horrible movie.
It's about an unfortunate young woman who lives in the ghetto and leads a bleak and horrible life. She has aids. Her father raped her. She's pregnant/became pregnant several times. Her mom is evil and beats her. She's also really fat. And school kids probably laugh at her.
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So far Clive hasn't returned. I hope he'll still answer my question when he does catch back into the thread about what particular makes the movie horrible to him.
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quote:Originally posted by dabbler: So far Clive hasn't returned. I hope he'll still answer my question when he does catch back into the thread about what particular makes the movie horrible to him.
It looks really, really depressing, like one of those "life sucks and then you die" sort of movies.
Back in the summer of 2002 I saw in theaters this one film called "The Madgeline Sisters" and it was along those lines. It was about a group of Irish girls in the 60s or whenever who are sent to this religious reform school and they're abused horribly. That's the film...the girls getting abused. What's the point? I know bad things happen. I don't need movies to tell me.
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Yeah, I'm working at Macy's for the season. I wonder if they will send me home due to The Cough.
Also, this movie looks better than movies like Magnolia or Happiness that make me totally miserable for hours.
quote:Originally posted by steven: Synesthesia--I read you have a job now, right? I'm happy for you. I know you really were struggling there, for a while.
I can pretty much guarantee you I won't be seeing this movie for the depression factor. I read White Oleander (thanks for the reminder, PSI...and I do mean that) years ago and finished up thinking, 'Now, I knew things could be and are bad for some folks, but did I really want all the nitty gritty details that will now plague my reading memories for years to come, sending me into mysterious fits of depression when I really would like to remain my usual sunny self?'
For me, it's a matter of self preservation to a degree. Simply seeing the previews, I can feel sympathy for people who find themselves in similar positions, and if ever an occasion arises in which I am in some position to provide support, I don't think I would ignore the cry. I also don't think, knowing myself as I do, that I will pay to see a movie that I know will just make me mope around for days because it reminds me to such a devastating degree what some others live through on a daily basis. I'm sorry, but that's how I operate.
Most of the time my lot is thrown in with those in the optimists' camp, so when something comes along to alter that position, the contrast of mood and outlook is so drastic that to me it's almost as bad as the source of depressing thoughts.
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In response to Katharina's post, one might also consider it to be a story of defining your own life instead of letting the world tell you your place.
I had never heard of the movie before just now and I intend to see it if it comes to my state, thanks Clive Candy.
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quote:It looks really, really depressing, like one of those "life sucks and then you die" sort of movies.
I think it's going to be more like one of those "life sucks but you live on and still have a good life" sort of movies.
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I haven't read the White Oleander book, but the movie didn't strike me as all that depressing. A lot of sucky things happened to the character but it didn't feel particularly soul crushing (maybe the movie just didn't do a good job).
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Dana Stevens has the uncommon negative review of Precious. A couple quotes that may touch on some people's aversion to the movie (including my own):
quote:Daniels and Fletcher no doubt intended for their film to lend a voice to the kind of protagonist too often excluded from American movie screens: a poor, black, overweight single mother from the inner city. But in offering up their heroine's misery for the audience's delectation, they've created something uncomfortably close to poverty porn.
quote:In its eagerness to drag us through the lower depths of human experience, Precious leaves no space for the audience to breathe or to draw our own conclusions. For a film about empowerment and self-actualization, it wields an awfully large cudgel.
quote:[L]ike the outlandish badness of the mother character, the overdetermined tawdriness of these scenes does the movie and its heroine a disservice. Daniels and his screenwriter, Geoffrey Fletcher, are so eager to wring uplift from Precious' story that they're willing to manipulate us to get it.
I would maybe echo Traceria's comment; I wouldn't go see this movie because I don't imagine I will feel uplifted by it. Despite the pull of Precious' redemption, based on the (largely positive) reviews it seems most of the time is spent on very explicit depictions of awfulness. Take, for example, from the San Francisco Chronicle's glowing review:
quote:It's depressing, devastating, harrowing and repulsive. But there are lyric flights of hope interspersed among that raw naturalism, and that's what makes this movie amazing.
For me, I will forgo the occasional lyric flights of hope in order to avoid the slog through a movie fixated primarily on repulsiveness.
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White Oleander made me depressed nigh-unto suicide when I was done with it, and I didn't really understand why at the time. Now I think I do. It isn't just that the daughter had a horrible life, it's that her life continued in horribleness until her mother chose to "let her go." It has nothing to do with the main character finding her strength and breaking off all ties with the uncaring woman whose fault it is that she suffered so badly. The story is finished when the mother finally ends her own selfishness, which, in my opinion, means that the story should have been told from the mother's POV. She's the one who makes a life-changing decision in the story. The daughter makes no such decision, shows no strength of character; in essence, she does nothing to create in the reader a sense that opposition can be overcome if one works hard enough or deserves to win. Which, in my opinion, is that reason we allow ourselves to be tortured along with characters. So we can share in their triumph when they overcome. The daughter/our proxy never did that, which just left me with a hollow, used feeling.
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I probably won't see it. If I experience miserable things, I prefer to read them. Visually miserable things have far too large an effect on me which can require hours to recover-- I can't afford to be overtaken by sadness.
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