by Luanne Paul King

Precious

The film Precious was based on the novel Push, by Sapphire. It is a very artistic film that intimately reveals Harlem life and its young people. At 16, Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a mother on welfare — and pregnant again. She’s fat, sullen at school, and she rarely talks to anyone. Is she on her way to being a parasitic “welfare queen” like her mom? The film shows us that Precious is not like her mom at all. Under  the anger and silence is an intelligent girl with hopes and ambitions, if only  she can escape the squalor around her.

Lee Daniels ably directed the film. Geoffrey Fletcher wrote the screenplay, commenting in Script magazine, “I think a number of us have looked at young women like Precious and, if we saw them at all, didn’t assume a rich, thoughtful, intellectual inner life.” Precious is illiterate but keeps it a secret. She was passed through school without anyone noticing! Fletcher hopes that when people see the film it will be difficult for young women like Precious to remain invisible or easily dismissed.

Precious’ father has repeatedly raped her, and her mother (Mo’Nique) is verbally and physically abusive. The teenager survived with a rich fantasy life, imagining herself as a beautiful light-skinned actress on a red carpet, or a radiant member of a church choir. When Precious becomes pregnant again, she is expelled from her school. The principal recommends an alternate school called Each One/Teach One. Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), the beautiful new teacher, asks her class of troubled girls to write in their journals each day. Months at the alternative school foster new skills and friendships. When the second baby is born what does Precious do next?

1 hour, 49 minutes. Rated R.

El Norte

This 1983 film was written and directed by Gregory Nava and produced by Anna Thomas. The story begins in Guatemala when Mayan farmers are under siege by soldiers working for a dictator who wants their land. Farmer Arturo Xuncax (Ernesto Gómez Cruz) is killed and his wife Lupe (Alicia del Lago) is carried off. Left behind are son Enrique (David Villalpando) and daughter Rosa (Zaide Silvia Guttiérrez). Grief-stricken, the youths decide to go to the U.S. and seek a better life. They experience the perils of the migrant road northward. Writer Héctor Tobar maintains that the hazardous trek north hasn’t changed all that much since El Norte was made and comments: “We see what happens through Enrique and Rosa’s eyes. … Nava’s triumph is that he succeeded in placing the courage and dreams of people like Rosa and Enrique  at the center of the story, rather than making them extras in the background of an exotic political thriller.”

This restored two-disc version of El Norte, with updated material, deserves a large audience. There are those who say that “compassion fatigue” toward immigrants has spread through American society, despite PBS programs. That’s  unfortunate. We need more films like El Norte.

140 minutes. Spanish, K’iche’ and English; subtitled.