Precious picture
Dan Slevin10/02/2010 10:07:00 a.m.
At the movies with Dan Slevin
AFTER watching so many films so similar in content and construction that they are hard to tell apart, it is a real pleasure to come across something that contains no familiar faces, has a director whose name is unknown (to me at least) and takes an approach to storytelling that consistently surprises and delights – even if the story itself is about as dark as it gets.
Lee Daniels’ Precious, I’m pleased to report, is far more than just novelty, rising confidently (cinematically) above its kitchen-sink foundations to soar high above almost every drama I saw last year.
Set in Harlem in the mid 1980s, it presents us with the unpromising figure of Clareece Precious Jones (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe). She is 16 years old and overweight, abused at home and ignored at school, dreaming of something better but not hopeful of a way out.
Her father has just made her pregnant for the second time and when the school finds out she is given the option of welfare (which sustains her grotesquely awful mother) or a special school for those with potential gifts – she has some talent for maths.
This is one of the few aspects of the film that doesn’t ring true – the school she is sent to seems altogether too perfect, and her teacher too selfless and personally generous – but those classroom scenes are played with such energy and earthy wit that it’s easily forgivable.
The potential for mawkishness is kept at bay throughout, as if the film knows how heavy it is getting, and there’s quite a bit of self-aware humour to help it along - the classroom discussion about the meaning of the word “relentless” comes to mind.
All the performances are first-rate, but the stand-out is comedienne and talk show host Mo’nique as Precious’ awful mother – a scintillating and vivid portrayal of brutal (and brutalised) self-regard. I’ve never seen anything like her.
Nearly 25 years ago, New Zealand director Martin Campbell made one of the finest television series ever in Edge of Darkness, a paranoid nuclear thriller with fiendishly clever psychological undertones.
It was six hours long and I’m sorry to say the only resemblance between it and Campbell’s new big screen version is that the new one feels six hours long.
Relocated to Massachusetts, and with fading superstar Mel Gibson in the role made famous by taciturn Bob Peck, this Edge of Darkness should be named something else so that it can’t be compared to the original. Then we can hate it for what it is rather than what it isn’t.
When Florian Habicht burst on to the scene in 2003 it was with a bizarre and perplexing black and white art film called Woodenhead. Who would have guessed that he would go on to become our premier documentarian, making essential films like Kaikohe Demolition and 2008’s Rubbings from a Live Man.
In his new film Land of the Long White Cloud he returns to the Far North of New Zealand, to 90 Mile Beach for the country’s richest fishing competition. He, and his off-sider Christopher Pryor, roam up and down the beach for five days getting to know the characters and helping us understand that strange and wonderful part of New Zealand even more. Often quite spellbinding.
AFTER watching so many films so similar in content and construction that they are hard to tell apart, it is a real pleasure to come across something that contains no familiar faces, has a director whose name is unknown (to me at least) and takes an approach to storytelling that consistently surprises and delights – even if the story itself is about as dark as it gets.
Lee Daniels’ Precious, I’m pleased to report, is far more than just novelty, rising confidently (cinematically) above its kitchen-sink foundations to soar high above almost every drama I saw last year.
Set in Harlem in the mid 1980s, it presents us with the unpromising figure of Clareece Precious Jones (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe). She is 16 years old and overweight, abused at home and ignored at school, dreaming of something better but not hopeful of a way out.
Her father has just made her pregnant for the second time and when the school finds out she is given the option of welfare (which sustains her grotesquely awful mother) or a special school for those with potential gifts – she has some talent for maths.
This is one of the few aspects of the film that doesn’t ring true – the school she is sent to seems altogether too perfect, and her teacher too selfless and personally generous – but those classroom scenes are played with such energy and earthy wit that it’s easily forgivable.
The potential for mawkishness is kept at bay throughout, as if the film knows how heavy it is getting, and there’s quite a bit of self-aware humour to help it along - the classroom discussion about the meaning of the word “relentless” comes to mind.
All the performances are first-rate, but the stand-out is comedienne and talk show host Mo’nique as Precious’ awful mother – a scintillating and vivid portrayal of brutal (and brutalised) self-regard. I’ve never seen anything like her.
Nearly 25 years ago, New Zealand director Martin Campbell made one of the finest television series ever in Edge of Darkness, a paranoid nuclear thriller with fiendishly clever psychological undertones.
It was six hours long and I’m sorry to say the only resemblance between it and Campbell’s new big screen version is that the new one feels six hours long.
Relocated to Massachusetts, and with fading superstar Mel Gibson in the role made famous by taciturn Bob Peck, this Edge of Darkness should be named something else so that it can’t be compared to the original. Then we can hate it for what it is rather than what it isn’t.
When Florian Habicht burst on to the scene in 2003 it was with a bizarre and perplexing black and white art film called Woodenhead. Who would have guessed that he would go on to become our premier documentarian, making essential films like Kaikohe Demolition and 2008’s Rubbings from a Live Man.
In his new film Land of the Long White Cloud he returns to the Far North of New Zealand, to 90 Mile Beach for the country’s richest fishing competition. He, and his off-sider Christopher Pryor, roam up and down the beach for five days getting to know the characters and helping us understand that strange and wonderful part of New Zealand even more. Often quite spellbinding.
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