Kills Me Dead » Movies

1. The title of this movie is too fricken long, holy god. Am I correct in assuming that Push is an Oprah Book Club™ book? Because if it’s not, there isn’t any reason for it to be in the title.
2. 1987, holla! Depressingly, I could barely tell it was 1987 since none of the fashion would be out of place on today’s city streets. God, I hate that the 1980s are back. The decade didn’t end that long ago, it’s too early for it to come back with irony! The main thing that would have tipped you off would have been the one tracking shot featuring a boom box with the giant double tape deck on the front. OMG. Just like a Run D.M.C. video. Love it.
3. Gabby Sidibe and Mo’Nique are every bit as good as you’ve been hearing they are, so it’s unfortunate that they’re playing such awful and depressing characters because it makes it incredibly difficult to watch their performances.
4. Dear trailer editors: thanks for keeping that incest storyline out of the trailer. I’m so thrilled to stumble upon this kind of thing as a major plotline in a movie. You owe me $35 for the CDs I went to buy myself afterwards to help assuage my nausea. (Yes, yes, I am aware I should do more research before I go see certain kinds of movies.)
5. Also, something I love about movie rapists is their propensity for using Vaseline as a lubricant. (And by “love” I clearly mean “Oh fuck, this is going to be disgusting and awful and this better be filmed in a way that doesn’t make me want to throw up…”)
6. This movie will do wonders for conservatives who view social assistance programmes as handouts for the lazy. The movie does a good job of establishing poverty as a cause for the kind of horrendous problems Precious encounters in her daily life, and yet Precious’ mother’s lip service to their social worker about how hard she’s looking for a job (despite doing no such thing) just paints her as this awful lazy woman, the kind people hold up as prime examples of why welfare is bad, etc. I also had trouble with the characterization of the grandmother; she was able to care for Precious’ firstborn on her own and came across as a normal if strict caregiver, so her daughter’s (Precious’ mother, Mary) own behaviour becomes difficult to source. Mary yells at her mother about having not done such a great job as a mother herself, clearly implying her failures as a person and as a mother are her own mother’s fault, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing wrong with Grandma. I could understand Mary better if she weren’t complicit in the abuse, but she’s clearly got a couple of screws loose.
   
   Pro tip: it’s pretty safe to assume that your daughter is not actually a romantic or sexual rival, unless you are crazy. Or you are Mia Farrow.
7. So… Precious’ father doesn’t live with her and her mother, and never seems to be around unless he needs to rape Precious? I find this confusing. I’m guessing that not formally living at the house is probably something that ensures Mary meets the criteria to receive social assistance, but you’d think he’d be around when the social worker is not visiting (just like her daughter Mongo is around when the social worker shows up).
8. Speaking of which, they call Precious’ daughter “Mongo” as in “Mongoloid” because she has Down’s Syndrome. I’m serious. I wore a pretty big WTF expression when we found that out, and I’m pretty sure she’s never given any other actual name. o_O
9. I had a really big problem with the fantasy sequences, mostly just for stylistic reasons. The ones where Precious would slip into an entirely different fancy dress reality were fine, but there were other times that the fantasy elements bled into her regular reality in a way that really altered the tone of the movie for me, and not in a good way. The Italian film sequence was kind of hilarious in and of itself, but was kind of obnoxious in the context of the movie.
10. Weirdly, my favourite part was in one of the fantasy sequences. It was the one where she is part of the choir, and the light-skinned boyfriend of her dreams who previously pushed her to the ground in real life is standing beside her, holding the dog that licked her face profusely in real life when he pushed her. Hysterical.
11. When I hear the name “Clareece”, I can only ever associate it with a) Silence of the Lambs and b) that doe Rudolph had a crush on in the claymation Christmas special.
12. No one should ever name their child Blu.
13. Fluorescent beige is an awesome colour.
14. I actually really liked Mariah Carey in this.
15. In case Precious wasn’t already a sympathetic enough character by virtue of being obese, illiterate, impoverished, and horrifically abused (but looking to improve her lot in life!), she ends up contracting HIV from her father by the end. I’m serious. This is Stuff White People Like territory, and I don’t care if that’s what happens in the book. AIDS BABY.
    
    Also, When Mary says that she can’t possibly have HIV because she never did it up the butt with Precious’ father, I died. Wow. A) Imagine having this conversation with your child? And more importantly B) I love 1980s HIV/AIDS awareness. Totally going to go watch that episode of Degrassi High where Dwayne finds out he’s HIV positive now to counteract this.
16. I’m confused why the movie started with talking about how Precious was so amazing at math despite her illiteracy, only to play the “Your way out of poverty is your writing!” card. Obviously they should encourage her to become literate, no question, I’m just unsure why they let her math skills fall by the wayside until the single moment where she used them to calculate that it would be better to stay in school than to work full time.
17. Choice IMDB thread titles:
    • Honest Question: Main character too fat to be sympathetic?
    • What does fluorescent beige look like?
    • Please take a poll! (I need responses so i can finish my final paper)
    • Which part did you literally feel yourself ready to vomit?
    • Precious = Emotional Fascism
    • Poverty Porn
    I think that last one sums up quite nicely how I feel about this movie: it kinda fetishes the life of a horrifically abused and impoverished for what I assume is the purpose of spurning you into action to Do Something™ about teenage illiteracy and social assistance red tape. It’s so gritty! So real! So boring. I didn’t feel terribly engaged by this movie in the end, despite the strong performances. And that’s okay.

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