As Josh put it before the big Telluride screening, “It feels like every movie has been an educational detour for this film,” and sure enough, “Uncut Gems” serves as a summation of their previous work, from the nearly oppressive subjectivity of “Daddy Long Legs” to the anxiety-inducing petty-crime spiral of “Good Time.” The siblings have been wanting to make a movie about Manhattan’s diamond district for more than a decade. While the Safdies no doubt had Anderson’s film in mind when they cast Sandler, the milieu came first. Here, the goateed actor dons a diamond earing, false teeth and tinted specs to create an all-new character: an immature grownup with a knack for making the worst decision in any given situation. That was the film that demonstrated how the right director could take what had long annoyed critics about Sandler’s shrill, stunted man-child routine and leverage it on behalf of more nuanced character studies. The trick is to embrace this unique opportunity to identify with such a high-strung character - a throwback to the maddening, trapped-inside-Sandler’s-head experience of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” nearly two decades ago. For some audiences, getting an actual colonoscopy would be more pleasant than the experience of sitting through “Uncut Gems,” which the Safdies have carefully tooled for our discomfort, layering a cacophony of sound and music on top of DP Darius Khondji’s restless handheld camerawork, all of which intensifies the insanity of the overlapping crises in Howie’s life. In an act of pure showmanship, the Safdies show the treasure being hauled out of an Ethiopian mine in an opening scene that plays like something out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” plunging into the sparkling core of the stone via a gag shot that spins through the cosmos for a minute or so before coming out the other end deep in Howie’s bowels. He’s expecting delivery on a massive black opal, which he believes to be worth at least a million dollars. It’s a traditionally Jewish enclave, and everyone there seems to know Howie, who’s well-liked but an obvious loose cannon: A reckless adulterer, an incorrigible gambling addict and a borderline con artist, Howie owes his brother-in-law Aron (Eric Bogosian) a sum somewhere in the low six figures, but like always, he’s got a plan that will make him rich. Howie runs a by-appointment-only jewelry store in New York’s diamond district, a humming network of tiny stands and private showrooms where specialists handle the bulk of the city’s precious stones. That’s because most moviegoers are looking for simple escapism, whereas “Uncut Gems” feels like being locked inside the pinwheeling brain of a lunatic for more than two hours - and guess what: It’s a gas! I wouldn’t know, but it’s a trip all right: Like a cross between a seat-of-your-pants heist movie and a protracted heart attack, this virtuoso character portrait grabs viewers by the lapels and thrusts them into the mind of Howard Ratner ( Adam Sandler), which is not a place most moviegoers would care to spend much time. Audiences have been comparing Josh and Benny Safdie’s “ Uncut Gems” to a cocaine rush since it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival.
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