Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler’s great­est strength is his flair for the ridicu­lous. It doesn’t mat­ter if he’s blue-suit­ed anger bomb Bar­ry Egan in Punch-Drunk Love or gar­bling buf­foon Bob­by Bouch­er Jr in The Water­boy – a prob­lem is a prob­lem is a prob­lem, and his char­ac­ters, a mot­ley crew of out­casts, weirdos and nasal-voiced nobod­ies, tend to have a lot of them. He cut his teeth as a come­di­an on vari­ety sketch show Sat­ur­day Night Live along­side the likes of Phil Hart­man and Chris Far­ley, before tran­si­tion­ing into a career as the King of Low­brow Com­e­dy which made him a beloved ban­ner­man for the North Amer­i­can nebbish.

San­dler scep­tics cite his ​‘seri­ous’ work with Paul Thomas Ander­son and Noah Baum­bach as proof of a tal­ent that is rarely exploit­ed to its full poten­tial, but there’s no need to hold up evi­dence as part of this the­sis. If you know, you know. He’s a gift­ed per­former, and when he deigns to chan­nel that into a project as mas­ter­ful­ly con­struct­ed as Josh and Ben­ny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, the results are noth­ing short of dazzling.

A decade ago, fresh off their sec­ond fea­ture Dad­dy Lon­glegs, the Safdie broth­ers tried to con­vince San­dler to star in their next movie. It was a long shot, giv­en their lack of cre­den­tials – they were small time indie direc­tors with just two fea­tures under their belts – and pre­dictably, the con­ver­sa­tion was shut down pret­ty quick­ly. (San­dler went on to make Jack and Jill, and sign a mul­ti mil­lion-dol­lar deal with stream­ing ser­vice Netflix.)

In 2017, after their fre­net­ic Queens runaround Good Time took Cannes (and, lat­er, the world) by storm, San­dler became aware of their work, and now, a project some 10 years in the mak­ing arrives ful­ly-formed and ready to shake down audi­ences with all the gus­to of a debt col­lec­tor who’s fast run­ning out of patience.

It’s impor­tant to note this because it would be inac­cu­rate to sug­gest any­thing about Uncut Gems is left to chance. Its fran­tic ener­gy gives it a feel­ing of loose­ness, but this is pre­ci­sion-engi­neered film­mak­ing which cre­ates that stag­ger­ing illu­sion. In fact, it’s only on repeat view­ings that you real­ly gain a sense of just how metic­u­lous the film is; the first time around, it feels like sen­so­ry overload.

The intox­i­cat­ing score by Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneo­htrix Point Nev­er) is a shape-shift­ing chimera. It draws inspi­ra­tion from mid-2000s club tracks through to choral inter­ludes, and in the sump­tu­ous pro­duc­tion and cos­tume design there’s enough gold, sil­ver and pre­cious stones to put the Tow­er of London’s col­lec­tion to shame. Add to the mix high-stakes gam­bling, mount­ing debts with cir­cling loan sharks, a com­pli­cat­ed domes­tic sit­u­a­tion, and a smug­gled Ethiopi­an black opal, and you have a recipe for exhil­a­rat­ing, unbri­dled disaster.

San­dler, as always, is at the heart of the chaos. As New York dia­mond deal­er Howard Rat­ner, his uni­form is strik­ing: rim­less Carti­er glass­es, a Fer­rag­amo logo belt, Guc­ci horsebit loafers. He looks put togeth­er, if not anachro­nis­tic – a rel­ic of old mon­ey who’s either uncon­cerned with or unable to keep up with the lat­est trends. He has a beau­ti­ful soon-to-be-ex-wife named Dinah (Idi­na Men­zel), and three kids, who live in a plush mini-man­sion in Long Island, while Howard works in Man­hat­tan sell­ing jew­ellery to bas­ket­ball play­ers and enter­tains a sweet romance with employ­ee, Julia (Julia Fox). But Rat­ner, like all of the Safdies’ strug­gling pro­tag­o­nists, is pad­dling fran­ti­cal­ly to keep his head above water.

Like dead­beat dad Lenny in Dad­dy Lon­glegs, help­less drug addict Harley in Heav­en Knows What, and impetu­ous crim Con­nie in Good Time, Howard is a deeply des­per­ate indi­vid­ual. A crip­pling gam­bling addic­tion has land­ed him over $100k in hock to var­i­ous cred­i­tors, all of whom are clos­ing in on him. As the net tight­ens, Howard devis­es a scheme to strike it rich: he imports a rar­er-than-rare black opal from Jew­ish Ethiopi­ans who work in the Welo Mine, and plans to sell it off to the high­est bidder

The Safdies, along­side co-writer Ronald Bron­stein, are unique­ly skilled when it comes to invent­ing pro­tag­o­nists who remain empa­thet­ic even when they’re unlik­able. We under­stand Howard’s thought process­es, even when we might despise him, and San­dler – King of the Under­dogs for so long it’s some­times easy to for­get he’s now worth half a bil­lion dol­lars – has the charis­ma to car­ry it off. He scram­bles for con­trol, and the sec­ond he has it he gam­bles it all away.

A remark­able sense of pathos is evoked watch­ing him bum­ble through life, locked in the trunk of his own car or crack­ing wise at the seder with his extend­ed fam­i­ly. You root for him, even when he gets knocked down by the hired goons he owes mon­ey to. You want Howard to catch the break he’s been chas­ing for what seems like his whole life.

But he is search­ing for a high that only ever lasts for a few sec­onds, and respite in Uncut Gems only comes in fever­ish, stolen gulps. A scene in a UV-lit night­club sees Howard look on while The Week­nd per­forms ​‘The Morn­ing’ – a rare moment of near-still­ness amid the car­nage. ​“All that mon­ey / the mon­ey is the motive,” the singer croons, speak­ing direct­ly to the obses­sion threat­en­ing to derail our wily protagonist’s life once and for all. Ten­sion comes in the most remark­able of places: watch­ing NBA All-Star Kevin Gar­nett play bas­ket­ball becomes as great a feat of anx­i­ety-induc­ing cin­e­ma as any high-stakes heist.

In a film so rich with the iconog­ra­phy of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and all-Amer­i­can deca­dence, it’s easy to get lost in the details; in the bedaz­zled Fur­bies, the mint green and baby pink walls of Howard’s office, the gold Mezuzah pen­dant he wears around his neck. But Uncut Gems is a sleight of hand trick, ready to land all its trumps while you’re still fum­bling for the Queen of Hearts. This might be more pol­ished than the Safdies’ past work thanks to Dar­ius Khondji’s svelte cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Lopatin’s ambi­tious, tur­bu­lent score, but it’s no less real or bruis­ing on impact.

Over the course of five fic­tion films, the Safdie broth­ers have cre­at­ed a series of anar­chic but always deeply com­pas­sion­ate snap­shots of human rot across the five bor­oughs of New York, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly demon­strat­ing their unmis­tak­able love and affec­tion for the city that raised them. They con­tin­ue to reck­on with the idea of how self-inter­est shapes a person’s every move while main­tain­ing a neu­rot­ic sense of humour, and their sto­ries are laden with self-induced suf­fer­ing that nev­er feels mawkish.

Their blunt per­cep­tive­ness and flair for cor­ralling entropy onto cin­e­ma screens, allied with a tru­ly unfor­get­table San­dler per­for­mance, mark Uncut Gems as not only a ludi­crous achieve­ment in tech­ni­cal finesse, but unre­lent­ing cre­ativ­i­ty as well. It’s styl­ish and sad and fun­ny and bleak and a thou­sand oth­er things. But most of all, it’s a pure hit of San­dler and Safdie.