YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME
WE JEWS CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP. THE DESperation for economic and cultural stability so endemic to the immigrant experience fuels the constant hustle that drives, shakes, jangles, and quakes Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, which stars Adam Sandler as harried Diamond District business owner Howard Ratner, who’s on the verge of scoring big, or on the brink of doom, or at the edge of sanity, or, more likely, all three at once. It’s an exceedingly Jewish movie, and, in this era of movie product lacking cultural specificity and homogenized for prime international export, that’s a good—even shocking—thing. It’s also an uncomfortably Jewish movie, and, in this era of sanded-down edges, when movies are so carefully formulated and tested so as not to offend anyone and potentially end up with an article titled “Why Uncut Gems is problematic in its treatment of…,” that’s a good—even momentous—thing.
The Safdies might not care how you feel when Lakeith Stanfield describes our nebbishy, money-obsessed main character, who can’t stop betting, scheming, and striving despite the world closing in on him, as “just a fuckin’ crazy-ass Jew,” but they do care about the cultural resonance of that typification, who’s saying it, when, and why. Thus (2009), (2014), and (2017) to the pace of the city, but moves to an entirely new, fearless rhythm, an expression of the inherent masochism of American entrepreneurship.
