Uncut Gems

Based on a very small sample, it seems that Josh and Benny Safdie like to make movies about self-destructive people. They made a fine one with Good Time, with Robert Pattinson, and now have a new film about a person whose self-destructive behavior is off the charts, Uncut Gems.

The star is Adam Sandler (originally it was supposed to be Jonah Hill, which would have been an entirely different movie) as a jeweler who has a gambling addiction. He's in deep to loan sharks, who start following him around, even to his daughter's school play (Sandler ends up naked in the trunk of his car). When he does get money, he ends up gambling it on basketball.

He also has a messy personal life. His wife (Idina Menzel) wants to divorce him, but has agreed to postpone until after Passover. He has an apartment he shares in New York City with his employee, a much younger woman (Julia Fox, in a fantastic debut).

Sandler has staked everything on a hunk of rock he has bought from Ethiopia, which contains uncut black opals. When it arrives at his shop he makes the fateful decision to show it off to Kevin Garnett, the basketball star, who is in his shop. Garnett wants to borrow it to bring him luck in a playoff game. This starts a downward spiral that ends with an unpredictable finish that certainly surprised me.

Uncut Gems is a good film but exhausting. When I walked out of the theater I expected to get jumped, because that's how Sandler lived his life. Frankly, given what we see, we can be amazed he made it to the age of 48. We first see him via a camera up his asshole, as he is getting a colonoscopy, the last shot is of a molecular level view of his blood. How does a person live this way? What drives him? This is not clear, but then again, is there a rational explanation for gambling addiction? I suppose it's the thrill of it all, placing large sums of money on a basketball game and then watching it in a life or death mode.

Sandler, who has done drama before, is excellent. He made millions with stupid comedies (I've never been a fan) but seems to want to atone for it. He is on screen for almost every shot, and there is great anxiety at every turn. He never seems to relax, which doesn't let us relax. In that way, the film is too draining--we could have seen a little more of the person who became successful as a jeweler but a failure as a human being (a scene in which he tries to talk to his teenage daughter is painfully poignant).

You may want to take a shower after seeing Uncut Gems, because it's so sleazy in its depiction of characters. Nobody's innocent here.