Of course, my squirming speaks to how comfortable we've all gotten with set paradigms in black film. Hollywood has long favored comedies or "urban" dramas, both of which mine the deprivation and depravity of the ghetto for entertainment (a phenomenon I call "ghettotainment"). Movies like "Menace II Society" and "Barber Shop" sit comfortably atop the Netflix queues of a multicultural audience. And at the opposite end of the spectrum are the uplifting dramas, stories of dignified black folk overcoming oppression and/or segregation, movies often set in a distant, racist past -- "Glory" or "Remember the Titans." But "Precious" is jarring, because it breaks all these rules. The movie is about racial oppression, but it's modern; its protagonist is inner-city but a female, not an archetypal gangbanger or would-be criminal; though she perseveres, Precious is clearly a victim, not a victor.

Perhaps the best thing about "Precious" is how it dismantles the well-honed defense mechanisms of the black audience. As viewers, we tend to be ready commentators, snickering at our own pain; we make fun of these on-screen moments because they're frequently so unconvincing. Movies, among other things, have taught us not to take ourselves seriously. But in drawing black pain so specifically and unsentimentally, "Precious" makes those cavalier attitudes impossible. When Mo'Nique snaps, "Shut the fuck up!" for the hundredth time or Gabourey Sidibe, the remarkable actress in the title role, tearfully confesses to her own sense of nothingness, the largely black audience I sat with was silent; I could feel a rare chill of recognition. In one of the film's most heartbreaking moments, Precious stands on the cold sidewalk with her new baby, looking longingly through the window of a church at a gospel rehearsal in joyous full swing. It's rare to see a black church portrayed as impotent. But it isn't a condemnation so much as an illustration of her isolation -- our isolation.

The truth is that all blacks harbor a bit of Precious inside them. To one degree or another, we have all lived her, been her. Who hasn't looked in the mirror and wanted "better" hair, less body mass, lighter skin, more confidence, more assurance that we're worthy? Who hasn't lashed out in anger at a world that we know holds us in subtle and not-so-subtle contempt? Who among us hasn't retreated behind an emotional mask in order to get by? Precious is a fully realized character but also a metaphor representing blacks at our lowest psychological ebb, a place we've always feared because we know it has the potential to swallow us whole. We tend to refer to that low ebb via statistics -- rising levels of depression and suicide -- but those are sociological abstracts that keep black people at an emotional distance from each other. "Precious" unceremoniously closes that gap. And just in time for the Obama era, which urges us to believe in the president as a symbol of success for blacks everywhere. Role model? Not hardly. To Precious, Obama is only another light-skinned black fantasy boyfriend with a dazzling smile and good hair.

It's perhaps not surprising that this project comes to us from Oprah Winfrey. Yes, she is the queen of love-yourself affirmation, but she's also a dark-skinned black woman with a history of weight problems. She is also a lightning rod for political controversy. When Stephanie Zacharek's review of "Precious" ran last week, some commenters groused about Winfrey's involvement, complaining that she too often mined the depressing territory of rape and degradation in projects like "The Color Purple" and, I suppose, "Beloved." But this is nonsense. Why should Oprah or anybody else in Hollywood have a quota for certain stories? How many harrowing Holocaust or violent mob stories has America embraced with fresh enthusiasm for each telling? (It's worth remembering that few Oprah fans supported the ambitious "Beloved," probably because slavery itself was unending sexual degradation that nobody wanted to stomach -- not even for one movie, even one with Oprah in it). Even more intriguing but less discussed is the involvement of Mo'Nique, the plus-size actress/comedian who plays Precious' Joan Crawford-like mother, Mary. Mo'Nique has graced several covers of Essence magazine and is rightly considered a touchstone of black female empowerment. Her no-holds-barred performance as the black woman of everybody's worst nightmares carries a certain risk -- will people think this harridan is the "real" Mo'Nique? Such are the questions of authenticity that dog every black film, whatever it is.

I give even bigger props to the film's co-producer Tyler Perry. Unlike Oprah, whose tastes run to the literary, Perry has become famous making simple stuff -- broad cross-dressing comedies and black family drama with overtly Christian messages of hope and redemption, movies that are really more propaganda than art. Those movies may top the box office, but they don't do much to humanize black folk or expand our story. But Perry has shifted gears with "Precious," at least temporarily. Maybe he'll even stay on this courageous course, something that is the polar opposite of crowd-pleasing pablum like "Why I Got Married" and "Madea Goes to Jail." But "Precious" proves you don't always have to choose between artistic and commercial success; the film's first opening weekend was record-breaking. It's a sign how much we needed to tell this story. And, perhaps, how many stories there are left to tell. 

That's a lot of adversity to overcome, a virtual trauma pile-up, and you could argue that Precious' story -- as it's told in Sapphire's 1996 novel and as it's adapted here -- would actually be more effective if some of these dire circumstances had been dialed down just a bit, leaving some room to focus on Precious as an individual rather than as a symbolic victim. In the novel, Sapphire seems to be striving to pack in the greatest number of personal and social problems for maximum heartstring-tugging, point-making value, and the ultimate solutions to Precious' complex, anguishing problems -- education, the love of a few key people who genuinely care -- come off as too pat.

That problem extends, to a point, to this movie version, directed by Lee Daniels. (Geoffrey Fletcher adapted the screenplay, and its executive producers include dual powerhouses Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.) But the performances are so plainspoken and direct that they manage to push the material beyond the confines of a mere social-problem tract -- as played by the cast, these characters aren't symbols of inner-city hardship, but people. When we first meet Sidibe's Precious -- the story is set in 1987 Harlem -- she's a girl who might be better off, practically speaking, if she could just close herself off from the world. But Precious isn't closed off, as Sidibe plays her: She's cautiously expressive; she may be watchful, but she's curious, too. She shows flashes of a sense of humor, even though she can barely afford to have one. And she doesn't mind going to school: For one thing, she has a crush on her math teacher, and she harbors cheerful daydreams that he'll whisk her off to a nice life in the white-bread suburbs.

That's a world away from her life at home. In the evenings, she does her best to cook meals for her sour-spirited mother, who berates her with a degree of cruelty that's almost unbearable to watch. (Mo'Nique plays the role with unnerving efficiency, her face a mask of nearly immobile hardness.) Precious tunes out, when she can, by drifting into escapist fantasies, most of which involve an imaginary "light-skinned boyfriend with nice hair" and an array of diva-like costumes, accompanied by the adoration of camera flashes, though Precious has no skills upon which to build that fame -- in fact, she can't even read.

Fortunately for Precious (though admittedly a little too late -- we're talking about a 16-year-old girl who's unable to recognize simple words like "at"), a tough-minded principal urges her to switch to a special school. There, enrolled in a pre-GED class taught by an unsentimental but compassionate teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton, in a meticulously controlled, no-nonsense performance), Precious is finally able to live a life in the world, instead of only in her mind.

There are other links in Precious' support net: Lenny Kravitz shows up as the marvelously named "Nurse John," the dreamboat health professional who befriends Precious when he assists in the birth of her second child. And Mariah Carey, in a superb, tough little performance, plays a welfare worker, Mrs. Weiss, who tugs like a terrier to get Precious to open up. Carey's approach to the character is both hard-nosed and delicate: She understands the idea of intimidation as an act of kindness.

What Daniels seems to recognize, perhaps even unconsciously, is that even though this is supposed to be Precious' story, for most of it she's a passive, if sensitive, receptor: The forces swirling around her provide most of the drama's dynamics. And within that context, Sidibe's performance is understated but alert. It's not her line delivery that gets to you, but the cautious curve of her smile, a smile in which she indulges only occasionally. When we see her going off to her first day of school, the blue plastic beads she wears around her neck are a dash of visual confidence, offsetting the shyness of her lumbering carriage.

Daniels -- who produced "Monster's Ball" and directed a previous feature, the 2005 drama "The Shadowboxer" -- indulges too frequently in gratuitous shaky camera work, and the picture overall has a dull, grayish look. Those stylistic choices are predictable, but in other ways, Daniels is sensitively attuned to the story he's telling: He takes care to keep the long list of horrific details of Precious' life from being too relentless -- he doesn't flinch from them, but he doesn't seek to punish us with Precious' tribulations, either. The actors are in tune, too, knowing how to break the story's thunderclouds: At one point Precious emerges from her baffled silence to ask Mrs. Weiss outright, "What color are you, anyway?" "Precious" is a blunt, effective piece of work that succeeds not because it paints a realistic, believable picture of inner-city hardship, but in spite of it. Its characters are rescued, perhaps just barely, from the worst fate imaginable: that of being case studies.