The Thrilling Modernity of Uncut Gems
The nominees for Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards were the following; 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the winner, Parasite. Many of these films were excellent and Parasite was universally lauded as the “correct” pick for the award. I will not debate Parasite’s quality — it is a penetrating movie with slick directing, and excellent performances. Away in its own corner, off the main stage, were cries for another movie to be recognized. That movie was the Adam Sandler crime thriller, Uncut Gems, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, two brothers that are leaping up the Hollywood ladder after a decade in the NYC indie scene. In this author’s opinion, the Uncut Gems snub was expected but was every bit as glaringly obvious a mistake as Brokeback Mountain’s loss to Crash at the 78th Academy Awards. Uncut Gems is a movie that is going to define the end of the 2010s, Uncut Gems is a movie that is worth betting on.
A quick rundown for those unaware of Uncut Gems, just to catch you up to speed. For the spoiler wary — there will be spoilers in this article but they will be noted as such for your convenience. Adam Sandler stars as Howard Ratner — a forty-eight year old jeweler and compulsive gambler in New York City’s Diamond District. He’s got a wife, kids, mistress, and a gambling debt that would make Michael Jordan blush. When it comes time to collect, Ratner bets big on two things; a precious black opal and the performance of Kevin Garnett and his Boston Celtics during the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals.
I’ve seen some observations that peg the Safdies as nihilistic. I think this is incorrect. In Jonathan Rosenbaum’s essay, “Uncut Gems and the Messes We Make of Our Dreams”, he argues similarly; “I tend to think that they aren’t quite the nihilists that they’re sometimes cracked up to be, and that the greedy, carnivorous world they so accurately and efficiently expose is one we can all recognize, with some honest misgivings mixed in with gaping awe.” The Safdies’ storytelling is bleak and pugnacious not because they are miserable people who hate themselves and others, but because they internalize the world around them and effectively spit it back to us as what it is — fast-moving, hostile, and overwhelming on a sensory level. This is one of the first movies of the 2010s that feels distinctly of and about its time period. Other movies may use smartphones, Uncut Gems is a movie about what it feels like to have a smartphone.
Uncut Gems has rightfully earned a reputation as being overwhelming, anxiety-inducing even, and that’s all by design. Gems is confident controlled mayhem. From the claustrophobic shots to the constant cross-talking (or cross-yelling) to the continuing escalation of the plot, Uncut Gems is a movie that is close to impossible to keep up with on your first time through. It never allows the viewer to breathe for a moment as even in its quieter moments, the viewer will still be piecing together the last four scenes. Yet, the film marches on to the rapid beat of its own drum. Once the film ends, you realize that the whole thing was pretty simple after all which in turn makes the rewatch a superior experience than the first watch.
The rewatches give the film added texture and flavor. Such texture has been revealed in the quality of the discourse surrounding Uncut Gems. Jewish Currents released an excellent roundtable discussion about what Howard’s Jewishness meant in the context of understanding what it means to be a modern Jew, calling it the most mainstream movie about Judaism since the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. Other excellent reads of the film came from Matt Singer, who argues that Uncut Gems is structured shockingly like a basketball game — moreso than movies about basketball. A popular reading of the film talks about it as an example of a modern magical realist film — one such interpretation came from Joe Cross who positions the opal’s role in the film as being less plot device and more a signifier of magic in reality. And as is de rigueur, there are many a thinkpiece on Uncut Gems as commentary on late capitalism. Many of these essays are fascinating, insightful looks at a movie that is bursting at the seams with capital T-Things — visual flourishes, auditory tricks, aside remarks, incidental dialogue, Gems has more happening in it than your average viewer can reasonably take in. What a viewer picks up on during their first watch will differ from others. Some might see it as a straight crime thriller, others as a magical realist cautionary tale, others read it as an anxiety attack committed to screen, and then you have dissidents, like myself, who will argue to their dying day that it is a cut-and-dry screwball comedy.
Here’s some evidence — as part of the Criterion Collection’s Closet Picks video series, a sort of “What’s In My Bag” for film dweebs, Benny Safide picks out L’Argent; the final film of Robert Bresson. Safdie says that Bresson is “funny in his own way” and mentions that he’s been trying to get an article published about how the famously austere director is actually a comedian. He calls L’Argent a “dark comedy.” “If you think about the premise of this movie, it is about a joke gone horribly, horribly wrong. And it’s seen through to its very end. Yes, it’s kind of crazy and dark but the very base of it sounds like a joke, it’s so insane.” The same could be said of Uncut Gems.
My co-writer, John, is of the opinion that most, if not all films are comedies the second time through. I disagree, but I see his point — especially in relation to crime films. Unlike a movie like Goodfellas, where the jokes are heightened upon rewatch out of dramatic irony — but always in service to the greater retelling of a man’s life, Uncut Gems is a dark screwball comedy on its first watch. It incorporates elements of tragedy and drama, of course, most great comedies do, but it is so funny, so relentlessly paced, and so desperate that it becomes a showcase of absurdity. The following statement might not mean much to a certain audience and it might mean a lot to another audience; I would wager that this is the funniest Adam Sandler movie of his career. I don’t say this to be snarky; Billy Madison is great. I love Little Nicky. Let’s sit down and chat about Happy Gilmore, I am not a man of discerning taste.
Let me explain. Imagine that you’re watching two skiers ski down a mountain when an avalanche starts one-hundred miles up the mountain giving both skiers enough time to react but not to escape. One skier stays calm and does their damndest to avoid the worst of the avalanche, mindful of the divots and moguls on the slope. The other skier panics and tries to outski the avalanche, ignoring any divots or moguls on the slope. In turn, they hit every single divot and mogul on the slope. As the spectator, safe in their cabin and emotionally removed from the incident, who is the funnier skier to watch; the one calmly facing the avalanche or the one flying through the air, contorting themselves like a Looney Tune to avoid their inevitable fate? Howard Ratner is the latter.
Here’s the thing though; you gotta respect Howie. The Sandman kills it. For those saying it is his best performance, they aren’t wrong. Empaths will prefer Punch Drunk Love, a fair second choice, but in terms of playing to Adam Sandler’s star image, you really can’t beat Howie. Howard Ratner is obnoxious; he’s mean, he’s loud, he’s a liar, he’s childish, he’s shameless. He is almost every Happy Madison main character rolled into one — minus the positive traits — and dumped into the Safdie’s gritty New York City. But he’s still got Sandler’s charm and because of that ethereal quality; the loyalty of the audience. It is an excellent casting choice, playing on two decades of performances by one of America’s most recognizable entertainers. Any other actor would not have worked. Both Harvey Keitel and Jonah Hill were considered for the role, both substantially different actors than Sandler, and both would have changed the movie considerably. It is impossible to say if those choices would have made the film better or worse — but it would have been a totally different movie. The audience would have received Howie in a completely different way had he been played by the grizzled Keitel or the younger Hill. Sandler’s casting gives the film the comedic legacy that it needs to execute both its darkest and its funniest moments. Benny Safide’s gallows humor interpretation of Bresson combined with Sandler’s darkly funny performance fuels Uncut Gems’ diabolical manic energy and explains the contradictory feelings the audience of Uncut Gems express as the credits roll.
I first saw Uncut Gems in a local theater with probably about four-dozen other people, practically filling the tiny theater. In front of me was a twenty-something couple, I heard them mention the Witten — an internet in-joke that I will not delve into further. To my side and behind me were a smattering of middle aged couples or elderly folks, the usual viewing audience at a smaller venue. I distinctly remember the reactions of the people as they were walking out; younger folks like the Witten couple enjoyed it. One of the older couples leaving the theater couldn’t do anything but breathe a sigh of relief. I heard some people complain that it was too stressful. I was dazzled. This was my initial review;
“adam sandler and julia fox take turns spitting on my face while the safdies film it. This is how I win.”
I needed some extra time to process my thoughts. Clearly.
I insisted that my friends go see it. On New Years’ Day, I went to a megaplex to see it with a friend and his girlfriend. We got front-row seats, not ideal, but an interesting sensation for a movie like this. It was then that I realized how straightforward the movie was and how funny it was. It wasn’t the white-knuckle thriller with some comic elements that I had internalized as, it was a comedy with bite — totally different. I was ecstatic, my friend was too, in spite of the neck pain. I recommended it to many more people; friends, co-workers, relatives, guys who hung around the lobby at my job. Anyone who would listen. I was a Gems evangelist.
Uncut Gems played to my sensibilities so well, I almost forgot that it wouldn’t play to everyone’s. To me, the movie had everything. It was engaging, it was funny, it had great acting, a great plot, looked great, sounded great, and it felt like a punch to the gut. To the people who saddled Uncut Gems with a C+ Cinemascore, it was clearly not their bag. I don’t know if this would fix it but I think their expectations were misaligned. Due to the presence of The Sandman, it seems distinctly possible that audiences thought the movie was going to be another sophomoric comedy movie instead of a drama. The Golden Globes even had to update their classification of Uncut Gems, changing it from “Comedy/Musical” to “Drama.” Of course, I argue that Uncut Gems is a comedy with dramatic overtones and was in the correct category initially but hey, I’m not the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The disconnect between audiences and directorial intent comes down to expectations as to what makes a joke in a movie. Most expect the script to make jokes — and Gems has no shortage of those, but it is the atmosphere that is making most of the riffs. It is the claustrophobic cinematography and the unyielding sonic barrage that introduces some humor into an otherwise sordid movie.
*Here Be Spoilers*
The sound design in this movie is far-and-away, the thing I return to the most when I think about this movie. From the first shot, the viewer is thrown into the Welo Mines in Ethiopia, surrounded by miners pushing, yelling, and digging. A group of miners carry one of their injured out of the mine and engage in a loud argument with their Chinese foreman — we get no subtitles — we don’t know what they are arguing about but we know it’s loud and it’s serious. It doesn’t let up. The Safides bring us into New York City via a visual transfer into a colonoscopy, itself complimented by the beeps of machinery and the contracting of a colon. Once outside, New York City is represented as a furious collection of car honks, chattering heads, the alert notifications of iPhones, babies crying, the mass movement of feet, the zooming of the subway underneath the sidewalk, the construction above the pedestrian’s head, it is impossible to escape the sounds of the cityscape. Except for the soundproof mantrap that protects Howie’s jewelry store from the outside world. Only one sound matters in that mantrap and it’s the sound of a buzzer. Goddamn, that buzzer.
This buzzer is among the funniest characters in a 2010s comedy. It is so annoying, so piercing, so anxiety-inducing, and plays so well with the cast that it is practically a lost Marx Brother. This scene, in which Kevin Garnett and his crew are stuck inside the mantrap, had me cracking up inside the theater as those around me were biting their nails. The sound design here is perfect — the way the sound builds & builds, each line a small joke and the buzzer the punchline. This is what The Naked Gun does, it overloads the viewer with joke after joke so you don’t even know what to laugh at anymore. Uncut Gems does the same thing, it’s just more relentless and nasty.
Uncut Gems moves at the pace it does because that is the pace we live at now. With social media, smartphones, and the omnipresence of the internet, this is the era of hyper-connectivity. We live in a 24/7 marketplace, we can never escape our jobs, our debts, our demons. Not that Howie would ever want to escape his demons, in fact he actively courts them. Early in the movie, the viewer sees Howie watching the Celtics-Sixers game on his phone while putting his son to bed. We see how obsessed Howie is in watching his bet play out in real-time, how these games take precedence in his life, at the expense of his son’s opinion of him.
Furthermore, Howie is able to place his final bet because modern tech enables him to do so. Howie calls a Blade for his assistant Julia to bring her to the Mohegan Sun casino so she can place the bet in person. The anachronistic invocation of the ride-sharing helicopter service, Blade, is revealing in its immediate utility. This is a scenario that would have been impossible without the aid of cell phones and the internet. The marriage between smart-technology and humanity has exacerbated Howie’s worst impulses and enabled him to make exponentially riskier decisions than ever before.
Uncut Gems is one of the first American films distinctly about the modern era without making that its explicit focus. The broad strokes of Howie’s life are a tale as old as time, he’s a schmuck, but the details of Howie’s rapid decline are inextricably modern. Many films try and fail to grapple with the human condition of the post smartphone world but Gems makes it look easy. Howard Ratner is a man who lives and dies by the modern late-capitalist economy. He is what we will all become if we succeed and what we will be like when we fail. He is hyper-attuned to his victories and his failures. Every victory is incentive to double down and every failure is the same as victory but doubly so. If Howie folds, it’s Game Over. To be late is to be wrong and to be wrong is to be dead, so Howie can never be wrong and he can never be late. This reaches a not-so unexpected conclusion when Howie is victorious but fails to realize that he is out of time.
You may still be wondering; how is it funny? And to this I say, if you think about the premise of this movie, it is about a bet gone horribly, horribly wrong. And it’s seen through to its very end. Yes, it’s kind of crazy and dark but the very base of it sounds like a joke, it’s so insane.
