Uncut Gems movie review & film summary (2019)
The Safdies use New York City in ways that haven't been seen since films in the '70s. The city has been so cleaned up and gentrified and homogenized it might be easy to forget that so much goes on at street-level, so much chaos, the marginalized and lost seeking a foothold, the grifters and hustlers slipping through the cracks, working their angles. The Safdies' "Heaven Knows What" was documentary-like in its approach, but their follow-up "Good Time" was a race-against-the-clock thriller, its action sprawling over the five boroughs. The Safdies are nervy, funny, and comfortable with discomfort. Their characters have no access to comfort, and yet in every moment they're striving to escape, hustle, talk their way out of things, talk their way into things, get what they need, what they want. Veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji (a changeup from the Safdies' regular collaboration with Sean Price Williams) brings out the sickly gleam in this world, the green-fuzz of the interior lighting, the glamour of some of the interiors juxtaposed with the sleaze of the others.
In a recent conversation between Adam Sandler and Brad Pitt for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Pitt observed that even though Howard makes all these bad choices in "Uncut Gems," you worry about the guy. It is Pitt's contention that this is because of Sandler's "warm-heartedness," something you always feel, no matter the material. I think there's something to that. You hear people expressing surprise when Sandler gives a good performance. There should be no surprise. When he's given good material, like Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch Drunk Love," or Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories" (to name just a few), he's as good as it gets. Behind his humor is pain and rage, both of which he is able to tap into. Here, as Howard, complete with goatee, fancy glasses, "club" clothes, he is a portrait of a man living on the edge. He never stops talking. He never stops striving, scheming, shouting, hustling. In his eyes is the devotional gleam of the big score.
"Self-delusion" is a redundant term. All delusions come from a willingness to buy into a fantasy, an off-chance, a long shot. In a delusion, your brain is a cage, and you are your own prison guard, monitoring the perimeters of allowable thought. Delusion feeds addiction, and addiction needs a constant supply of delusion. "Uncut Gems" shows this electrified-fence feedback loop like no other film in recent memory. It's excruciating and exhilarating.
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