Uncut Gems

UNCUT GEMS                      B                    

USA  (135 mi)  2019 ‘Scope  d:  Josh and Benny Safdie

Like the other Safdie movies, this is an adrenaline rush, a trip into the dark side of high stakes gambling addiction, featuring Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a brash, overly obnoxious New York City jeweler who is always seeking the next big score, continually floundering in debt, with a pair of thugs following him wherever he goes, where even his bookie (Mike Francesca) has no interest in seeing him, as chaos and mayhem follow him wherever he goes.  Obviously inspired by Altman’s California Split (1974), a hyper-realistic film that thrives on real gamblers and authentic locations, that treats Vegas like the gambling mecca it is, this film is instead set in the Diamond District of New York where European Jews escaping Hitler settled in WWII and still maintain a dominant influence, with Howard working in a small jewelry shop, a man glued to his cellphone, endlessly talking as he weaves his way through city traffic, oblivious to the sounds and noises of a bustling city, talking to several people simultaneously, usually cutting someone off to speak to another, then losing the connection, carrying on this chaotic thought process filled with neverending interruptions, where he’s so wrapped up in his bets that he loses all contact with the reality of his family living in Long Island, where his kids completely ignore him while his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) is ready to divorce him, as he’s keeping an upscale apartment in Manhattan for his younger mistress, Julia (newcomer Julia Fox, every guy’s wish, more of a sexy wish-fulfillment fantasy than a real person), who works for him as a counter clerk, splitting his time between the two women, yet utterly miserable when it doesn’t provide the instant gratification he so badly desires.  Always beset by money problems, borrowing from one loan shark to pay off another, he’s $100,000 in debt to his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) who has lost all patience in dealing with him, resorting to strong-armed tactics that require threats and bodily harm, but this is no deterrence to Howard’s ambitious schemes, as he literally can’t stop from shooting himself in the foot, always viewed as his own worst enemy, continually falling deeper into debt where it would take a miracle longshot to get him out.  This is the normal day-to-day anxiety level for Howard, walking from one catastrophe to the next, yet always holding out hope that his big winnings are just around the corner.

This kind of delusional mindset is fertile territory for the Safdie brothers, makers of Good Time (2017), highly popular at the box office while acclaimed by critics, yet their delirious plot contrivances are easily overlooked as viewers get caught up in the pulsating rhythms of the journey, propelled by a mesmerizing techno score written by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), always a rollicking thrill ride, like finding that ultimate attraction at an amusement park and riding it over and over again.  Yet this obsessively compulsive high wire act comes at a price, where the laws of physics suggest what goes up must come down, usually with tragic results, as Safdie characters are so damaged from their own neurotic theatrics that it’s impossible to live any other way, caught in a labyrinth of their own making, suffocating from their own ill-advised decisions.  Entering the world of this rat race, Sandler stands out amongst the crowd, suffering from a kind of attention deficit disorder that perfectly suits his lifestyle, with illusions of grandeur, always seeking the limelight, wanting to be at the center of it all.  Used to neverending disappointments, he’s thrilled when Celtic forward NBA All-Star Kevin Garnett (playing himself) walks into his store seeking that something special, attempting to awe him with an uncut black opal from an Ethiopian Jewish mining company (smuggled inside a fish), which he later plans to auction off at inflated prices, allegedly valued at over a million dollars, if you listen to Howard, who’s a compulsive liar.  Garnett is so enthralled with the aura emanating from the precious stone that he talks Howard into reluctantly lending it to him for the Eastern Conference Finals game tonight, leaving a championship ring as collateral, which Howard immediately pawns, betting on Garnett to have a huge game, adding suspense to actual footage from the game, thinking things are finally coming into place.  But Arno gets wind of the bet, knowing the money used actually belongs to him, having the power to stop the bet, depriving Howard of all his winnings.  Somewhat shell-shocked in disbelief, things spiral out of control even more than usual, with Howard desperate to make up for his losses, lost in a Sisyphean cycle of neverending mood swings, filled with profanity-laced tirades, feeling utterly euphoric one moment or suicidal the next when things don’t go as planned, exhausted by the neverending series of disappointments. 

Unfortunately Howard’s character fits the negative stereotype of Jews as money-grubbers, dressed in Gucci from head to toe, though the Safdie brothers are themselves Jews raised in New York.  Cleverly interwoven into the story, however, are autobiographical sounding details of Howard’s Jewish heritage, mesmerized by what he learned about Ethiopian Jews on the History Channel, developing a kinship and fervent interest in the stones they dug up, undeterred, however, from becoming implicated in colonial opportunism as well as a global network of exploited labor when it comes to developing an auction scam.  More authentic is the family scene of Passover Seder, mirroring the Coen brother’s own Jewish upbringing in A Serious Man (2009), with the kids running around in search of the hidden matzo, or reciting (in English and in Hebrew) the Ten Plagues, with Howard seated at the same table as Arno, given an almost surreal context.  Howard’s deluded attempts to make up with his wife are laughably pathetic, clueless to just how despicable he’s become to her, gambling away their life savings, and with it any hint of family respect, subjecting them all to potential harm from criminal thugs seeking retribution, where every action he takes is counter to his family’s well-being.  Pushed to the edge of despair, Howard’s desperations are reminiscent of Ben Gazzara in Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), where morals are thrown out the window when it comes to the pressures of repaying a gargantuan debt, including the risk one is willing to take to wipe the slate clean.  The panic and paranoia that follow him throughout the film are inescapable forces that refuse to release him from their clutches, where even a brief window of opportunity quickly turns to misfortune, with Howard’s ominous miscalculations becoming the heart of the film, drawn into a nihilistic universe where there is literally no escape, as the price is too steep.  Shot by Darius Khondji on 35mm accentuating a heightened realism, somehow bringing the kinetic energy of the streets to life, with Martin Scorsese as one of the film’s executive producers, yet this contaminated world is not a pretty place, and Howard is as unreliable and blatantly screwed up as any character in recent memory, with little sympathy even from viewers, as he mistreats everyone, constantly yelling and screaming, treating people like scum, referred to as “the most annoying person on the planet.”  There are misogynous tinges throughout this male-dominated film, where the near invisible women are reduced to secondary characters, yet the atrocious male behavior has massive consequences, too blind to see the light, allowing darkness to consume every small corner of the film, where viewers can only shake their heads in dizzy bewilderment.            

The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected)

Director Noah Baumbach (left) on the set with actors Adam Sandler (center) and Dustin Hoffman (right)

THE MEYERWITZ STORIES (New and Selected)             B-                   

USA  (112 mi)  2017  d:  Noah Baumbach

Given a limited release in theaters while also available streaming on Netflix, this film was a surprising selection to Cannes, which had never allowed online streaming films before, creating something of a culture clash that was widely discussed, eventually outlawed in the future, passing a new rule which requires competing films at Cannes to at least make an effort at French theatrical distribution, where existing French laws mandate that films can’t be shown on streaming services until 36 months after their theatrical release, which seems extremely punitive, but is the final word on the subject.  Basically a bloated extension of Baumbach’s earlier and still most successful film, The Squid and the Whale (2005), as this similarly features another self-centered, narcissistic blowhard whose overbearing presence dominates the center of the film, Dustin Hoffman as the aging patriarch Harold Meyerwitz, whose days as a relevant and defining sculptor artist have passed him by.  Instead he’s forced to watch other so-called lesser talents dominate the art community, yet he is so vainly full of himself that no one else matters, with others reduced to secondary status and exhausting critical scrutiny, including his own kids who have been devastated by divorce and separation, bullying and then barely even acknowledging them, receiving little recognition or any of his time growing up, as he was too busy thinking about himself and his own relatively undistinguished career (yet he constantly weighs his children’s artistic merits against his own inflated view of himself), spending his days fuming about his work being ignored while working as an art professor at Bard College.  With a heavily Jewish and distinctly New York City slant, ostensibly feeling like a Woody Allen film when he loved filming on the streets of New York, the family dysfunction on display is cringeworthy, becoming a battle royale between two Meyerwitz sons from different marriages, misfit Danny (Adam Sandler), the oldest, already reeling from his own divorce, where he was a stay-at-home Dad and now has no job or work skills to speak of, and Matthew (Ben Stiller), way across the country on the West coast, raised by a different divorced mother in LA, a huge financial success story that his East coast siblings could only dream about, becoming a money manager for rock stars and the rich and famous.  Both hold extreme contempt for their aging, self-obsessed father, as they barely know the man, but also have a distorted sibling rivalry thinking the other is the favored son.  Left out of it all is Danny’s sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), shy and retiring, something of a wallflower, who’s always around but on the periphery, as the boys always take centerstage.  That’s the way it’s always been so she has no qualms about it, as it’s more like a situation she’s grown accustomed to, as there are some families where fathers simply extend much more attention to their sons.  Also exuding a near invisible presence is Harold’s fourth wife Maureen (Emma Thompson), a bohemian eclectic who survives by ignoring Harold altogether, taking trips without him, vacationing alone, while numbing the pain with some heavy drinking, her self-medicating solution, though pretending to be sober around Harold (who doesn’t notice). 

With each child introduced with their own chapter heading, shown through a vignette style of accumulated scenes, their distinctive personalities are constantly on display, where there is a great deal of agitation and personal rancor, where literally no one, not even wonder boy Matthew, considers themselves a success, as each is unraveling from heavy doses of personal failure and poor self-esteem, literally mired in their own self-loathing and contempt.  Appropriately enough, the film opens in one of Danny’s rages, screaming profanities at whatever’s nearby, cars, curbs, pedestrians, fighting a losing struggle to find a parking space on the streets of New York, eventually forced to pay near extortion rates for a space in a parking garage, which he finds humiliating, as what self-respecting New Yorker accepts failure in navigating the local terrain, which is specifically designed to make it more difficult for unfamiliar tourists who simply pay through the nose for their naïveté.  While we quickly catch onto the wavelength of patriarchal arrogance exuded by Harold, there’s an underlying level of annoyance and disturbance that defines these men, where just under the surface lies intense rage exploding at any minute, making them somewhat small-minded and detestable human beings, but then Danny shows another side, as he’s very close to his teenage daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patton), showing remarkable instincts with her, expressed in perhaps the most Cassavetes-like moment in any Baumbach film, a silly father and daughter piano duet singing a song from the family archives,  Genius Girl - The Meyerowitz Stories - YouTube (2:05), sweet, tender, and absolutely genuine, described as “a Meyerwitz and Meyerwitz composition.”  This instant humanization is an utter delight, easily the most poignant moment in the entire film, harkening back to the simplicity of Sandler’s early days on Saturday Night Live, which has always been his most charming period, Adam Sandler: The Hanukkah Song III - SNL - YouTube (4:16).  But that’s only a brief interlude, as the next day she’s off to college, up the Hudson River, following in her grandfather’s footsteps to Bard College, leaving an emotional void in Danny’s life, growing even more perturbed when he discovers his father is thinking of actually selling the Manhattan house, including most of his entire art collection, to prospective young buyers, a handsome interracial gay couple who have already made an offer.  Having just moved back home with his father after the divorce, this emotional upheaval is more than Danny can stand, as if the rug is being pulled out from underneath him, but his father reassures him it will be a family decision, in consultation with brother Matthew, which gets his blood boiling again, wondering why that rat bastard, who has never lived here, gets any say in the matter.     

Matthew happens to be in town on business and decides to meet his father for lunch, offering financial advice about the home, but they end up speaking over and on top of one another, both clearly infatuated with themselves and both refusing to listen, with Harold growing more and more irritated, walking out of the restaurant in protest, “like McEnroe,” a routine he pulls not just once, but twice, so by the third time when he runs away, Matthew has to chase him down on the street, both startled by the strange turn of events.  But things grow even more uncomfortable when they both pay a visit to Matthew’s mother, Harold’s second wife (Candice Bergen, who has since remarried into extravagant wealth), especially when she expresses sincere regret for not being a better mother to Harold’s three children, which sends both of them reeling out the door in shock, though likely for different reasons, as with Harold it’s all about himself, literally preening, exhibiting obnoxious behavior that is more than Matthew can stand, getting into a shouting match on the street with his father, exasperated at how little his father actually values him, so he offers retaliatory insults of his own, screaming at him as he drives away.  This sets up the weirdly uncomfortable finale, where Harold ends up comatose in the hospital from a brain seizure with blood rushing into his brain, where he’s literally at death’s door, but due to such a dysfunctional internal family dynamic, the doctors refuse to provide any information to the kids, which gets more absurd by the minute, becoming a game of musical chairs, as doctors and treating nurses simply disappear, leaving the beleaguered family to figure it all out.  While it does bring the three siblings together, for better or for worse, spending time at their father’s side at the hospital, but after a suspicious rough patch they seem to set aside their differences, where it’s actually a nightmarish childhood story by Jean that seems to quell the family resentment, with both brothers rallying to her defense, though the awkwardness with their father remains.  Do they love him or hate him?  Feeling more like a chaotic mess than a revelation, there are more than a few mawkish and slightly amateurish sequences, with Adam Sandler once again playing an infantile adult, where his films are simply a glorification of immaturity, which apparently sells well at the box office.  While he attempts to extend his range here (especially with his daughter), the buffoonery remains (especially with his brother), creating an uneven realm of emotions, where the most exhilarating moments are to be found in Eliza’s student films, which are manic diversions from reality, graphically explicit and sexually obsessed, where it’s hard to think of any father so easily accepting such a lurid display of their daughter’s nudity.  While it’s a male-dominated film, with Hoffman, Stiller and Sandler getting centerstage, strangely enough it’s the smaller moments with Eliza and Jean that are easily the most precious and gratifying, remaining unheralded and unsung, like they are in many families, dwarfed by the male antics of thoroughly detestable characters.