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Uncut Gems is Exactly That


Uncut Gems opens in Ethiopia at what looks to be a fairly severe accident at a mine. A couple men, uninterested or unmoved by this keep up the work until they find a rock with shards of extremely rare black opal embedded all over it. The camera moves in on the opal, magnifying its magnificent fractals of the whole colour spectrum, to a microscopic degree until it appears to be its own little galaxy, that itself gradually evolves into something organic, something beating like a heart, no longer dazzling but discomforting. We soon realize we are seeing the inside of a human body, and it becomes apparent (especially to anyone who’s underwent it) that this is a colonoscopy, and sure enough the pan widens to reveal the image on a medical screen in front of a doctor and a patient on a surgical bed, his face turned away.
As Uncut Gems was making the rounds at TIFF and various press screenings over the past few months, I was hearing a lot about these new young filmmakers the Safdie Brothers, an esoteric writing-directing team who had been steadily rising through the indie scene on films such as Heaven Knows What and Good Time, praised now as ingenious visionaries and compared to other iconic movie-making duos like the Coens and Powell and Pressburger. Such labelings are hyperbolic to say the least, but what Uncut Gems makes clear to someone who hasn’t seen their prior work is that Josh and Bennie Safdie are indeed superbly talented and unique in their perspective, in a way that compels you to see more of their work. You want to know what’s on their minds, how they see the world, what makes them tick.
And yet, Uncut Gems is a relatively straightforward story in both plot and presentation, following the acquisition of the aforementioned opal by Diamond District jeweller and sports gambling addict Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), his loss of it to the Boston Celtics’ Kevin Garnett, and subsequent attempts to retrieve it while struggling to evade a trio of vicious loan sharks. What immediately sets the Safdies apart (after that bewildering opening) is their mastery of mood and tension –particularly their near seamless ability to convey an uncomfortable anxiety in just about every scene. Their New York is a seedy, grimy, dangerous place, recalling the likes of Midnight Cowboy or Mean Streets, yet wholly modern; its’ people not as metropolitan as they might be, abrasive, unkempt, impulsive, and vulgar (the movie is apparently in the top ten for most F-bombs) across lines of affluence, class, and race -which intersect throughout the movie. It isn’t even all that violent, yet the promise of violence is ever present and nerve-wracking. And so there is an air of pervasive unpredictability, as though this dark cacophony of circumstances and powers is about to come crashing down on Howard at any time, with each new risk on his part viscerally harrowing.
There are a lot of bad judgement calls made by Howard, a thoroughly reckless, ignorant, and mean-spirited individual (also a deadbeat husband). Yet it’s a credit to Sandler’s performance that you somehow sympathize with the bastard and root for him, the cards being stacked against him on multiple fronts. For so long, Adam Sandler has been written off if not as a bad actor than as a stale and limited one, confined to headlining comedies of rapidly deteriorating quality over twenty-five years, though every so often hinting at greater dramatic capabilities (such as Punch-Drunk-Love). Lately though, he’s embarked on something of a career renaissance, beginning with a revelatory turn in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories in 2017. And Uncut Gems is almost certainly the best performance of his career, as well as one of the best of 2019. For as steeped as he is in vices and obsessions, Sandler never loses sight of the characters’ humanity. His Jewish identity and that of the Diamond District itself is extremely significant as well, as the film addresses themes on modern Jewish culture, class, and sociological anti-Semitism. And perhaps because he spends so much of the film on the bottom rungs of various power dynamics, Sandler plays Howards’ strongest moments with an irresistibly cunning and wicked glee, making the frightfully audacious climax in particular unbelievably thrilling for subject matter that has never been.
The cast around Sandler is terrific as well. LaKeith Stanfield brings apt energy and conflict to Howards’ client recruiter while Idina Menzel is superbly detached and cold (get it?) as his estranged wife. One of the great inspired casting choices is Kevin Garnett, who though he plays himself, does so as a character actor would, with eccentricities, vulnerabilities, and a compelling fixation on the titular mcguffin. However with a few additional exceptions, such as Eric Bogosian and Judd Hirsch, the Safdies fill the movie with unknown actors, each bringing their own authentic idiosyncrasy to memorable side characters –one thing these filmmakers do have in common with the Coens. Chief among them is Julia Fox as Howards’ canny and devoted mistress in a stunning debut performance providing one of the movies’ few genuine bursts of sincerity.
Not to say that the movie is all misery. In spite of its gloomy mood, Uncut Gems is entertaining, its’ characters and world often as bleakly funny as they are distressing, dotted with scenes that might play as ironic sketches in a different kind of Sandler film –such as one sequence at a school play and another at an auction. But these moments come in a narrative and visual context designed to keep you on your toes: cinematography that’s gritty but not grimdark, a versatile production design that always suggests a greasy underbelly to its opulence (Howards’ store most notably), and a glorious operatic synth score by Daniel Lopatin unmistakably inspired by 80’s Vangelis tracks.
Uncut Gems is a brutal film about greed, obsession, and even addiction, Howards’ Achilles heel being the routine sports betting responsible for most of the messes he’s in. And it might be the best, certainly the most potent, movie on those themes in a number of years. This is the kind of movie Scorsese might have made in the 70’s, carrying some of the themes of his oeuvre yet wholly distinct -making it exactly the film Joker wishes it was. It’s a non-stop roller coaster of a movie, but complete with all the apprehension and uneasiness that entails.

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