Uncut Gems is the latest film by the Safdie Brothers, well known for their previous film Good Time. It stars Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a Jewish jewelry shop owner who scores big, but is always searching for the next big score.
Both Good Time and Uncut Gems are harrowing, hair-pulling tense experiences that leave you yelling at the screen, or curled into yourself, trembling.
Uncut Gems creates this tension from the main character making terrible decisions and the audience knows it. Its similar to Jeremy Saulnier’s movies Blue Ruin and Green Room, where characters make purposefully bad decisions. All of the previously mentioned films walk the tightrope of having characters make bad decisions and still make them human and understandable.
This is a huge problem that plagues a lot of horror films. One film that this harms in a major way, in my opinion, is Hush (spoilers ahead). Hush is the story of a deaf woman who is tormented by a man from outside her house. Past half-way in the movie, a friend of the deaf woman comes to the house, and he is greeted by a man trying to get into her house. This would be intruder introduces himself as a police officer, and with no proof of this claim, the friend believes the intruder and even helps him find the hidden key to the house. That is when she finally gets a message out to her friend, but its too late and the intruder bashes her friend’s skull in with a rock.
The friend made a bad decision. He came to the house and believed this shady man without any proof of him being a police officer. This is compounded because not many people would be fooled by this, and the friend is not the main character and we don’t know anything about him. This totally breaks the immersion of the film, and just seems like a cheap way for the filmmaker to progress the plot after being written into a corner.
This is not a problem for Uncut Gems and the bad decisions are made with a purpose, and that purpose is to ratchet up the tension.
This is not the only thing that builds tension in the movie. Characters continually speak over each other, making a more manic, free-flowing and anxiety-filled environment. Characters can’t fully get their thoughts and speech across without someone else talking over them, imposing themselves over others. There are lots of up-close shots that make the viewer uncomfortable. One shot that stuck with me was when Howard was calling Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) while at the Weeknd’s concert. He is unable to get a hold of him as the camera pans out over a packed crowd, showing how isolated Howard is in this packed room of people enjoying themselves.
But a main reason for the tension in the film, I feel, is Howard’s bad decisions. This movie’s plot could be resolved as soon as it begins and the audience knows it. It is established that in events before the film, Howard is in serious debt. He has also bought a rare black opal and has set up an auction for it. All Howard has to do is not show Kevin Garnett his black opal. But instead, he has to show off his new big score to the biggest client he has had in his store. And that is relatable, who hasn’t wanted to show off something they have just bought or accomplished?
And even then, he did not have to lend Kevin Garnett the opal. He could have shown off the opal and told Garnett that it was up for auction in the next week. He pawned off Garnett’s NBA title ring and could have used the money to pay off his debts, but instead he bets it all on Garnett, reaching for that next big score, that next high. It feels very similar to gambling at the casino, and that is the truth of the character. Howard is addicted to gambling, and can’t stop. Everyone knows someone with an addiction and knows how hard it is to break it off. We see his lavishly furnished apartment, filled with luxuries that could be sold off to pay off his debts if needed. He artificially raises the bids on the opal at the eventual auction, leading to his own father-in-law (Judd Hirsch) to purchase it. But we see that Garnett was willing to pay enough for it, without Howard running up the price. He then sells the opal to Garnett, and instead of using the money to pay off his debts, he bets it all again.
We as the audience know that these are all bad decisions, and some of the tension is mentally or vocally yelling at Howard to take the clearly correct path. We know what he should do, and we believe that deep down Howard might know it as well, but he always makes the wrong decision.
But were these really the wrong decisions?
Part of the strength of Howard’s decision making in the film is that in theory, in Howard’s mind and in the film’s universe, these decisions technically could work. We can see why Howard could see these plans working, and some of them do. He does have money, but bets it to get more, and it is a successful bet (before it was pulled out of). Running up the price would have got a few thousand dollars more out of Kevin Garnett, but he continued to run up the price and was particularly greedy. But in the perfect world, any of these plans technically would have worked, and they come oh-so-close to working. So we as an audience see these almost working, so we can further empathize with Howard. We can see how these plans would work out in his mind, and that they mostly do, but they never quite work out.
These decisions would not be as effective if we could not see the merit in them. It is important that we could put ourselves in Howard’s shoes and see us making those same decisions. In the Hush example, I do not see me making the same decisions if I was in the friend’s shoes, and I cannot see the reason behind it. However, all Howard’s decisions are realistic for someone in his position, and anyone could see them technically working, if not for one flaw or another.
Without the possibility of succeeding, the film turns bleak and fatalistic. You feel that Howard is trapped by his debtors and that there is no hope for him to make it out of that situation. This could work for a very dark film, but does not lend itself to a tense experience. For tension to exist, we need to believe that the character could make it out of this situation, and this film expertly shows that there are many different paths Howard could take to get out of this position. But he never does.
Another form of tension I personally found at the end of the film, was to see how Howard would ultimately fail. We see him hit it big on his biggest bet yet and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The only problem is that this is a movie and Howard is a bad character. He is a well written, fleshed out character, but he is a bad person. And I felt that if Howard finished the film on top, it would be the film condoning his actions. I thought that he could not win because people like this in movies don’t win. It was equal points surprising that Howard won, and still tense because you are still expecting the fall.
Decisions in movies are essentially choices between two or more options. The best, most compelling decisions in storytelling are the ones that have multiple viable options. If a character could pick either option, there is tension in the audience on which choice the character is going to make. Obviously, in the long run, one option can be overall the correct one, and one option can be overall bad, but the trick is to make the bad decision a realistic option for the character. Bad decisions are where a character has no reason to make that decision other than to move the story forward. Where Uncut Gems succeeds and most other films fail, is that each decision made has a purpose and a reason why it was made, making Howard relatable, and the film heart-pounding.
The Sensations of Storytelling 