11/18/2023 0 Comments Uncut gems howard![]() ![]() Uncut Gems is a horror film posing as a crime thriller, an anxiety film equal to Aronofsky’s mother! or Polanski’s Repulsion. The Safdies conjure a hectic, bustling world in Uncut Gems, a world of babble and noise and beauty and ugliness. There are a few moments of respite as well as moments of comedy, but they mostly serve to suspend the anxiety the film creates, not release it. I will not spoil any more of the plot-my “premise” paragraph seems too long as it is-I’ll simply say that there were moments that I (and other audience members) audibly gasped (in shock, in exasperation, in frustrated disbelief) at Howard’s choices. KG is convinced that the gem will lead to his success in that night’s Eastern Conference Semifinals game against the Philadelphia ’76ers (it does).įrom this early point in the film Howard goes on to make a series of increasingly-nerve-wracking decisions against the backdrop of his loan shark’s enforcers’ increasingly-violent promises of retribution. However, Howard allows KG to borrow the gem for the night, taking Garnett’s 2008 NBA Championship ring as collateral for its return. He demands to buy the gem, but Howard refuses-he needs the money from the auction to get clean of debt. In one of the film’s most extraordinary visual sequences, KG gazes into the opal and undergoes a seismic epiphany. Seeking to impress Kevin Garnett (“KG!”), the jeweler shows off his opal, Ratner’s star. Three things happen on the day we meet Howard: Arno’s henchmen come to prove good on their threats of violence towards him if he does not pay back his loans Demany brings Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett to Howard’s shop and Howard receives the titular uncut black opal, which he plans to sell at auction for at least a million dollars. He is also in the middle of an affair with one of his employees, Julia, whom he keeps in his Manhattan apartment, barely-concealed from his wife and children in Long Island. However, his debts don’t stop him from continuing to place bets. He is flush with cash all the time, but is also severely indebted to a loan shark named Arno (among other folks). His associate Demany brings rappers and athletes to him to buy unique, high-end pieces. Here is the film’s premise: Howard owns and runs a jewelry store in the Diamond District. There is probably some metaphor here-the aesthetic journey from the gem’s dazzle of color to the interior glistening-chewing-gum-pink flesh of Howard’s colon-but I’ll avoid remarking further upon it. It is 2012 in New York City and Howard Ratner is getting a colonoscopy. The camera swirls through the gem and, in an opening sequence that rivals Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, eventually enters the colon of our hero, Howard Ratner.Ī title card informs us it is two years later. ![]() We are taken into a kaleidoscope of shifting colors as Daniel Lopatin’s beautiful synth score kicks in. One of the miners peers into the gem, and the camera follows his gaze. Two Ethiopian miners take a gamble and use the chaos as an opportunity to sneak away, back into the mine to make off with a rare black opal, the titular uncut gem. This initial cacophony signals the babble and buzz that will continue through the rest of the film, and the camera’s lingering on the destroyed leg signals the violent cost that underwrites the material splendor at the heart of Uncut Gems. The Ethiopian workers’ voices mix into the Chinese mine operators’ attempts to calm the situation. An Ethiopian mine worker is borne up by his frenzied fellows, his leg a raw mangled bloody mess. Uncut Gems opens in the turbulent aftermath of a mining accident. Frenetic, chaotic, and unceasingly energetic, the Safdie brothers’ 2019 film Uncut Gems plays out like a two-hour panic attack. ![]()
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