[rating=9.00]
The word that comes most to mind when watching any film by the Safdie Brothers is audacious. Josh and Benny Safdie’s films ooze with grimy audacity, recalling the glory days of Scorsese and Tarantino almost without even trying. They tell tales of unlikeable anti-heroes caught in untenable scenarios. Theirs are stories of a kind of hyper-reality, which somehow feel as unrealistic as they do entirely possible. They might be the most interesting filmmakers working within the crime genre today.
Their latest film, Uncut Gems, is a marvel of criminal hyper-reality. A film ten years in the making, owing partly to the detour they took to direct Robert Pattinson in the phenomenal Good Time, Uncut Gems is a powerful tour de force of cinema that explores the same grimy New York explored by Scorsese—who serves as a producer here—in Mean Streets and After Hours.
Set amidst the backdrop of New York’s Diamond District, Uncut Gems is a taut, terrifying, nerve wracking examination of humanity at its most desperate. It also features one of the year’s best performances from none other than Adam Sandler, whom I guess likes to remind us once a decade or so that when he’s not making bad films as an excuse to go on vacation he’s actually capable of sublime artistry and is, in fact, a master of his craft.
Sandler plays jewelry dealer Howard Ratner, a man for whom the threads of life are frayed and in constant threat of unraveling. In constant debt thanks to a severe gambling problem, Howard tries to keep his life as together as he can by jumping from one shady deal to the next before his house of cards comes tumbling down. Hoping to make a score big enough to get him out from under the thumb of a brutal loan shark, he purchases a rare, uncut stone in the hopes that he can auction it off and finally make some real money. If he can stay away from the bookies in the meantime, it just might work.
Ratner is a man forever caught between two worlds. Criminal and legitimate; wealthy and destitute; wife and mistress. While the film never suggests that his problems are anyone’s fault but his own, this makes for an especially tense narrative that wreck the audience. This is, seriously, one of the most stressful films I have ever seen and the price of admission should include a short term prescription for anti-anxiety medication.
The script from the Safdie Brothers and Ronald Bronstein never leaves us with a moment to catch our breath, instead giving us a slow and methodical build up of problems and situations that need to be solved without the benefit of catharsis. Each new scene seems to offer a new weight for us to carry alongside Howard until we can’t help but wonder who will be crushed first, Howard or ourselves.
In a year beset by claims of films that recall early Scorsese, only Uncut Gems stands tall next to the master’s. The Safdie Brothers have long since proved they’ve got nothing to prove, but they cannot seem to help themselves. Uncut Gems feels like an audacious debut and is imbued with a raw energy that cannot be contained. Never mind that it’s their fifth feature, the Safdie Brothers are making films as if they still only have the one shot at making it big. How lucky for us. With Uncut Gems they’ve proven just what a treasure they are and the fact that we’ve still got so much to look forward to from this filmmaking team should give us all hope for the future of the criminal genre.
Uncut Gems opens everywhere on Christmas Day.
