It’s rare that you encounter a movie that’s starkly honest, blatantly hopeful, and just plain brutal to watch. The new film Precious is just such a film. Not only that, but it makes you struggle along with the titular heroine for every small measure of grace that can be had. To the uninitiated, Precious was the winner of this year’s audience choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It shares a lot in common with last year’s winner Slumdog Millionaire in the way it paints heroes who dream of something better, despite the overwhelming cruelty and hopelessness of the world around them.

Where Slumdog was something of fantasy, Precious remains a vividly human horror of urban decay and social injustice. Set in Harlem in the late 80s, the movie begins with another day in an overworked and overcrowded public school. This is where we meet 16-year-old Precious, as she dreams away her math class, fantasizing about marrying her teacher and being whisked away to the suburban New York community of Westchester. Before you get confused, you should know that there’s nothing sexual about her imagination. The daydream almost resembles a wholesome fairytale that Precious has constructed for herself. She merely wants an escape, and when you see Precious’ home life, well you start to understand why. Her mother is physically, verbally and emotionally abusive, while her father abuses her sexually.

Precious is kicked out of school when it’s revealed that she’s pregnant for a second time. Of course, what she shares with no one is that her children are the product of incest. Truly, filmmaker Lee Daniels’ fearless depiction of Precious’ life is told in such graphic detail that it is equal parts horrible and inspiring. Between the rape and incest, the horrible diet, the borderline illiteracy, and her mother occasionally trying to whack her over the head with a frying pan, it’s a wonder there’s any small room for hope in this girl’s life. But therein lies the power of Precious, that despite all this horror, nastiness, and desperation, there is still that irrepressible need to dream. Rarely are life changes as sweeping and total as they are in the movies. In actuality, they are more often then not simply a bunch of small moves, here and there. The true lesson of Precious - everyday tragedies can get a little bit better if you’re strong enough to see it through.

This strength is especially evident in the talent cast of Precious, and it is the acting that helps to balance of pathos and optimism that gives this movie its life. Newcomer, Gabourey Sidibe delivers an unexpected but complete emotional performance in the title role, while she paints with a palette that is brazenly cheerful to heart, but yet crushing in its misery. Possibly though, the thing about Precious that makes her so relatable is her ability to draw the audience into her almost unbelievably desperate circumstances. Through her performance, the audience feels her frustration, and her want of something more, but at the same time feeling ill-equipped and alienated. Truly, every one of us knows that feeling of elation that follows in wake of things finally going your way. We also know that opposite feeling, that feeling of frustration that lingers long after fate cruelly sticks out a leg to trip you up.

Not to be out-shadowed though is Mo'Nique, who plays Precioous’ abusive mother, Mary. Mo’Nique delivers such a tour de force performance of arrogant cruelty that even when she tempers her character with a shred of humanity, she breaths fresh new life into this emotionally complex role. Mo'Nique is magnetic performance is rooted in the fact that, despite being the villain of the piece, Mary and Precious exist as two sides of the same coin. Throughout the narrative, wherever Precious finds optimism, Mary finds suspicion. Another surprise lies in Mariah Carey’s role as a tough-but-caring social worker. Burying her diva image beneath a frumpy suit, uncoiffed dark hair, and a think Long Island accent Carey does disappear into this role, to the betterment of the movie.

Precious is so powerful a dramatic work that you can overlook some of its problem areas. Are some of the characters a bit too stereotypical and one-dimensional? Perhaps, but since the film is told from Precious’ perspective, maybe it’s her tone that’s coming across. Plus the film tends to rely on the cliché of the tireless, saint-like teacher here embodied by Paula Patton. Even the character’s name, Blu Rain, implies a kind of ethereal quality, a goddess teacher that never yells and never feels frustrated despite the troubled students she deals with. Patton wears it well, and as an audience member it’s hard not to fall under Ms Rain’s spell. Indeed the film itself is almost magical for letting you leave the theatre not with feelings of revulsion, but with gratitude and remembrance that our situation’s never too dark for there to be a chance of light.