Uncut Gems and Ernst Lubitsch
Two film buffs I know well recommended to me Uncut Gems. One described it well as a New York Jewish Del-Boy film.
Howie Rayner is a gem dealer living life on its edge. Up to his knees in debt because of his gambling he acquires a rock from an Ethiopian mine with an opal in it.
A top basketball player Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics wants it. The heavy mob are closing in but can Howie sell it in time?
It’s a high octane, chaotic, shouty film with Howie at the centre of it.
It’s a world Adam Sandier understands and he reprises the role beautifully.
The skill of the film is that you root for him though he is bare-faced liar, philanderer, totally unreliable but with the gift of the gab.
The cast is mainly Jewish too and the location the diamond district of New York.
Of the rest of the cast Kevin Garnett plays himself, New York socialite Julia Fox his mistress and both take to acting well. It’s all terrific stuff, pacily directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, a critical and financial success but one word of warning: every second word is the f word. I have rarely seen a film with more swearing.
So if you’re offended by coarse language it’s not for you. For me it’s up there with Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus and the best of Woody Allen in its evocation of New York Jewish life.
Making a link with the latest in the Sky Arts Directors series on Ernst Lubitsch is not as difficult as it might seem though over 60 years separates Uncut Gems and the final Lubitsch films.
Lubitsch, too, was Jewish though an emigre. He was great risk taker and I suspect, had he seen Uncut Gems, he would have appreciated its humour and pace.
One piece of dialogue was with Howie Ratner’s recto-colon surgeon Ike Bleiman assuring him there was no cancer in his colon. “ We Jews’ said Ratner “have a very special relationship with our colon”.
“Yes … ’ replies the surgeon Bleiman, “… and thanks to that I have a house in the Hamptons. “
Cinema should be derivative and innovative. Ernst Lubitsch inspired other mittel Europa filmmakers like Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. I could see Woody Allen, Quentin Tatantino and the Coen Brothers’ influence in Uncut Gems whilst remaining a fresh and original oeuvre.
