l saw The Blind Side on a Tuesday night in a packed theater.  Precious, this season’s stronger film about race and poverty, is showing on a single screen forty miles down the road - and had an audience of less than twenty on a holiday weekend.  Regardless of which film viewers prefer, their collective willingness to flock to see one film and not the other is telling of American tastes.

In The Blind Side, white people drive BMWs and black people are either homeless or have homes and do or sell crack.  The only way out of the ghetto is for a good christian woman (oh yeah, she’s white) to come along, and in her unflinching maternal spirit, take you in and put you on a path to future success.  By this means, the homeless black man of yesterday can become a millionaire pro football player tomorrow.  In Precious, there is no white savior.  White people are overwhelmingly absent from that film, willfully blind of their privilege and too afraid to venture into the “dangerous” world that these characters inhabit.  So the title is appropriate for American audiences; they rush to see the romanticized, Forrest Gump version of struggle and turn their “blind side” to the real stories - the stories that are “too difficult” to watch.  The movies, after all, exist for us to escape.  And there’s no escaping Precious.  The Blind Side, on the other hand, ends in smiles and swells of music, in happy tears and great success.  And the white audience can laugh at racial slurs within the film while telling themselves they’re not racists because they’ve come to see this movie about helping black people...

All that said, The Blind Side isn’t a bad film.  It’s told with a sensitivity one wouldn’t expect of a story so ripe for Hollywood embellishments.  While there are some music swells, they’re avoided with at least a little restraint.  And let’s face it, Bullock has the charisma to carry the film, especially when supported by a cast as strong as those around her:  Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Kathy Bates and Tim McGraw all turn in very heartwarming performances.

The bottom line - this one can wait for video.  Precious, however, is a far superior film that can’t be missed.