The Unstoppable Force of Adam Sandler in Josh and Benny Safdie's Uncut Gems

Sandler looking downright Mephistophelian / A24

UNCUT GEMS 
(Josh and Bennie Safdie, USA, 2019, 135 minutes)

Adam Sandler never stops moving in Josh and Bennie Safdie's vertiginous Diamond District thriller, Uncut Gems. From start to finish, Sandler's gem merchant, Howard Ratner, is barely keeping his shit together. If he lets down his guard for even a second, he could lose a fortune, and a lot of people depend on him: his family, his employees, his girlfriend (who is an employee), and his customers, especially Boston Celtic forward Kevin Garnett (who plays an especially demanding, obsessive version of himself).

Before introducing Howard, the Safdies begin with a 2010, Exorcist-inspired prologue in which two Ethiopian miners excavate a chunk of rock studded with black opals. Since one of their colleagues suffered a grievous injury in the process, it's clear that this is a literal blood opal. As one worker raises it up to the light, cinematographer Darius Khondji (Funny Games) zooms in on what looks like a starry sky in miniature. From there, he dives into the stone, leading to 2001-like special effects that light up the screen to Daniel Lopatin's magical-whoosh of a score. The interior of the opal gives way to a certain glossy body cavity, which reveals itself as Howard's colon. After his colonoscopy concludes, the film begins in earnest. The year is 2012.

Garnett, Stanfield, and Sandler admire the rock / A24

From there, the Safdies introduce the major players in short order, starting with the girlfriend (the amazing Julia Fox, matching Sandler measure for measure) who would rather party than work, the regular customers, like Demany (Lakeith Stanfield), who serves as Howard's unofficial PR flack, and the thugs pressuring him to pay his debt to their loan shark boss, Arno (a chilling, dead-eyed Eric Bogosian). Howard, it turns out, is a gambling addict, who doesn't know when to quit.

When Kevin visits his store, Howard sees a chance to make a dent in his debt, but what the towering athlete wants more than a diamond-encrusted Furby pendant is the opal-studded rock from the prologue. It took Howard 17 months to track it down after he saw it on a History Channel special about Ethiopia's Jewish tribe. "They say you can see the whole universe in opals. That's how fucking old they are," he exclaims. When Kevin refuses to leave without the rock, which Howard had intended to sell at auction, he lets him hang on to it in exchange for his clover-bedecked championship ring, which he promptly pawns, so he can increase his bet on that night's Celtics vs 76ers game. Kevin is convinced the rock will bring him luck, but it will prove to be unlucky in ways that none of its guardians can anticipate.

Once the Safdies, who wrote the script with co-editor Ronald Bronstein (Heaven Knows What, Good Time), have set the wheels of the plot in motion, it's up to Howard to figure out how to make it out of this mess alive. If he creates every problem that arises--"You did this to yourself," his exasperated brother-in-law, Arno, sighs--Sandler makes Howard just likable enough that you want to take this ride with him. Though Uncut Gems isn't exactly a comedy, the dialogue is consistently colorful, if not cuttingly funny, which makes the relentless pace easier to take. The same goes for Lopatin's score, which differs from his more drone-oriented work in Good Time. In this case, he adds a wistful, flute-infused motif that alternates with a gentle, whistled reverie, recalling the smeary character pieces of the 1970s--The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow--that clearly served as an influence.

Julia as Julia bets it all on Howard / A24

When Kevin fails to return Howard's rock on time for the auction, he cajoles Demany into driving him to Philadelphia to collect it, even though his whole family, including estranged wife Dinah (Idina Menzel, miles away from Frozen and Wicked) is expecting him to join them for his sullen teen daughter's play. In Howard's world, the domestic obligations don't stop as he ping-pongs between his house in Long Island and his apartment in Manhattan. When Howard admits he fucked up their marriage, Dinah counters with a less ambiguous assessment: "You are a fuck-up." If Menzel's character comes off as a bitch, you know she's right, just as you know the Safdies love this guy anyway. He has a lot of their father in him, a man they fictionalized with a similar degree of affection and frustration in 2009's Daddy Longlegs (it's too bad Bronstein appears to have left acting behind, because his performance in that film couldn't be better). In his Times of Israel interview with the brothers, Jordan Hoffman notes that they "modeled him after associates of their father."

As the film hurtles towards its conclusion, Howard suffers one indignity after another from the loss of his clothes to the bloody nose featured on the film's arresting B&W poster. Just when it seems as if things can't get worse, a light appears at the end of the tunnel. Maybe, just maybe, he can pull out of this nosedive into death and destruction. One way or the other, the final 10 minutes will completely wreck your nerves. The first time I watched the film, I felt pummeled by the pace and the cacophony of yelling and pounding. The second time around, I was able to more fully appreciate the editing as the Safdies cut between Howard in his shop trying to keep the beasts at bay, Julia tasked with a very tricky maneuver, and the opal-powered Celtics game which will determine the fortunes of most everyone in Howard's orbit. The way they bring these stories home is nothing short of masterful.

"Well, we all fall in love, but we disregard the danger" / A24

Equally masterful is Adam Sandler, building on his work in PT Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and Noah Baumbach's under-seen--or at least underappreciated--Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017). Because I know him best from these finely-wrought films, rather than his mainstream comedies, I'm not surprised he can act; I'm just surprised to see him give a white-knuckle, Roy Scheider-in-Scorcerer-level performance. Except funnier.

Though it opens in Seattle on Christmas Eve (and halfway through Hanukkah), Uncut Gems is a Jewish movie. That's not just my take on it; the Safdies have only encouraged the impression by the gemological-meets-pornographic title and by setting the action during Pesach. It seems perfect, really, that Sandler, performer of one of the best known Hanukkah songs--will now be associated with a Passover classic. Or that's my hope for this film, which takes a critical, yet sympathetic look at a seriously flawed, but not completely un-redeemable human being. An uncut gem indeed.


Uncut Gems opens at SIFF Cinema Egyptian on Dec 24. The annual Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Aong plays the next day at SIFF Cinema Uptown with Chinese food and live klezmer music. For more information, click here.