Uncut Gems: American Sport

There is something very present and in the now about the Safdie Brothers latest “Uncut Gems" . The movie is the epitome of urgency, and urgent is the word I'd use to best describe this time and space we are currently occupying. Every word , every scene in Uncut Gems is imbued with a sense of “get it done now or the world will end". If we're being 100 that's how America feels at the moment. It is maybe how it has always felt, which explains our obsession with the only comparable form of entertainment… sports. The games of chance, will, strategy, and stratification that especially in waining moments, you can feel as if connected by a jack to the action, the periods of time where it counts the most, where everything is on the line, and the team, your team either overcomes, or they fail. Failing having a myriad of consequences both large and small. Uncut Gems taps into this very energy to create a film that suspends you in animated anxiety. There are constant changes in momentum, periods where you are yelling at the screen, there are players, and most importantly there is that sense of urgency and the high associated with “winning”. The movie follows Howard Rattner (Sandler) a charismatic, fast talking, tacky, somewhat uncouth jewel salesman who through some form of shady business dealing procures himself a very rare stone for much cheaper cost than what he normally would. Of course that stone will cost more than what he bargains for , but Uncut Gems is not a morality tale, in fact its more a tragedy, and it doesn’t judge its players, it merely lets them play. In essence the Safdie Brothers made a film that fully captures the spirit of sport and Americas obsession with it, addiction to it, and more importantly winning.

Two films I watched this year made me think “This makes Crank" (The 2006 action film) feel like On Golden Pond" (Not in quality, but pace and intensity), Michael Bay's “6 Underground “and The Safdie Brothers “Uncut Gems". The former is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, the latter maybe the best film I’ve seen this year. Both function quite a bit like a sporting event, moving the camera constantly to capture implied or physical action, running dialogue at the pace of play by play commentary, (which cannot allow for many spaces in-between) and by mainlining the most recognizable of their feature actor's traits into bloodstream of the movie. Difference between them both is that while the former uses actors abilities as part of an overall non essential minor organ, and at other times as a crutch, the latter uses Sandler's performance as the heartbeat of the film and crux of what it has to say. The American dream has become the act of stacking and shifting hustles that hide or momentarily stave off financial death and when winning is everything anything else is death. There is nothing in-between winning and losing, living and dying, everything is for everything, and very few things express and recognition of the the moral victory. The Safdie brothers film is a series of games each with the same kind of win or die stakes implied and used for effect in sports existing as a real consequence here. Kevin Garnett is playing a game (Literally and figuratively), Lakeith Stansfield’s “Demany” is playing games, Julia Fox’s Julia (Howard Rattner’s mistress) is playing games, and of course Howard Rattner himself is playing games. The reward is success, power, and the high associated with winning to which in some context, extent or another all of the players are addicted to in this film in varying degrees. The punishment is death. Physical death, financial death, death of a relationship one spent years establishing.

Sandler’s Rattner is helming a story that needs to move and be on the go constantly. He needs to make audibles, based on the information he’s receiving, and react accordingly while in the confines of the playbook. Who better for this than a comedian, especially one of Sandler’s talents, and more specifically his style. Sandler’s brand of comedy was always a bit of “dog with a bone”, a bit one track minded. Though in many cases and in most contexts this would be a disparaging remark , here I mean it to be indicative of Sandler’s unique focus. Sandler’s comedy and comedies, took one idea and strangled it. Wrestling around in his teeth, kneading it into our heads, not with just one repeating punch line, but several intermittent punch lines, jumping frequency and pitch, but not range.

After noticing a lack of Hanukkah tunes, Adam Sandler decided to sing a Hanukkah song about all the famous Jewish people you might not know about such as David Lee Roth, Goldie Hawn and The Three Stooges. [Season 20, 1994] #SNL Subscribe to SNL: https://goo.gl/tUsXwM Get more SNL: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live Full Episodes: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-liv...

Sandler always understood the power of repetition, not only in its ability to dull our senses into a state of acceptance that allows us to find the joke without analyzing it too deeply, but also to lull us into a false sense of expectation from which he can surprise us. This is ultimately what sums of his performance in Uncut Gems and its integral value to the film. We understand the idea of any Sandler joke within moments of the opening, the fun or funny, and in this case the exciting part is where the hell he’s going with it. Here the punchline or joke is in essence the tragedy of this film. In America and especially its metropolitan areas, success is always within our grasp, and yet always illusive. We are all successful in some way shape or form, but the high never last and we are always looking for more. We are always moving, shifting, running to or from something, and we are doing at increasing speeds all headed towards a red light. The Safdie brothers films are always exercises in anxiety, and energy, much like sport, and anxiety and energy has always been the calling card of Sandler, whether he’s feeling it or causing it in the audience. Uncut Gems acts thusly a the perfect marriage between actor and story, life and art, achieving one momentary high after another followed by momentary lows, so that ultimately what is accomplished is bagging up the essence of especially american sport , and american greed, in a way that entertains, and provokes analysis like sport, and even its tragedy ultimately coming up with a winning formula for a fantastically film that understands one of the core tenants action, american life, and sport is that one always be moving, but also understands that that movement must have purpose, something America and Michael Bay forgot some time ago.