Precious

Life is precious. Love is precious. Education and friends are precious. Family and having people to care for and encourage you are precious.

Tonight I went and saw the film Precious. It's hard to write about such a deep and affecting film without feeling like you're letting it down - nothing I can say can ever hope to reflect the deep and troubling dramas that Precious has experienced.

The thing about this film that really got to me was the absolute transformation Precious goes through. She starts as a girl - so fully aware of the world and all it's dark sides, yet so completely unaware of all the good things those of us who are luckier in our circumstances take for granted.

Like her mother. Her mother's self-obsession and apparent total loathing of Precious automatically puts the audience into the girl's corner. We can see that this girl has never heard a word of encouragement from anyone and that her life - and we want her to succeed. We want to see her rise above that.

Throughout the movie we see her encouraged to grow. She makes new friends and meets people who, like the audience, want her to win in life. She takes on the challenges and we see her time and time again rise from the ashes and keep going. By the end of the film she is a young woman and transforming - I can't say transformed because there is clearly so much more to her story than what we see in the two hours we are in our cinema seats for - into someone of worth, someone whose story we want to know and want to share with others.

Of course, everybody has their motivations, and one of the most heartbreaking moments for me was listening to Precious' mother explain why life had worked out the way it had for her daughter.

The movie is first of all heart breaking, but also inspiring and - what the critics might not tell you - funny.

I was engaged from the first moments of the film and not once did I wonder when it was going to end (Twitter has all but killed my attention span, so this in itself was an achievement).

Technically, the film was shot beautifully and it's rare you find a cast so well put together and, well... humble - just try to recognise Mariah Carey when she makes her appearance - the cast bow to the content and let the story do the work, they are merely the tools through which it flows. It's not often you find a film that lacks egos in the same way as this.

Beautiful, thought provoking and humbling.

Five Gopher Guys - go see this film.