Uncut Gems reviewed by Mark Kermode

it was interesting in the course of that interview you very kindly quoted what I had said about I quote you all the time no but friends and family that's nice it was nicely done of course I mean they didn't agree with it with the quote and I understand their disagreement as well but in punch-drunk love I always have the genius of that film was that what Paul Thomas Anderson managed to do was to identify the quality and adam sandler that had all that had always kind of kept me from finding his his film performances particularly funny i do think and we have to say this that he has been in some of the least funny comedy films around he's made some real stinkers I mean real proper absolute turkeys he also you know rose to fame with those albums that the safeties were talking about but I got to know him through cinema and I'm you know there's some Adam Sandler companies that I like but many just as many that I really really didn't like and I always found there was something the word was used there was creepy I was it was something it was a quality to him there may be the word creepy isn't right but there was something about him that was unsettling deeply unsettling and I found it deeply unfunny and in the case of punch-drunk love Paul Thomas Anderson who incidentally should we should say declares himself to be a fan of Adam so on but I mean when Paul Thomas Anderson said he was making punch-drunk love everyone thought at first it was a joke because he had just made magnolias which is a three-hour yes so do white but it's a three-hour ensemble piece movie and it was one of those films that was at the forefront of what was later referred to as the smart cinema move of that you know very salute you know modern cine literate cine asked big big casts complicated interweaving stories and somebody said what are you doing next he said I'm gonna make a dad and so on the comedy and everywhere now hahahaha anyway no no that is what I'm going to do also it's worth bearing in mind that wise up the ami man track that appears in was not written for Magnolia it was written for an Adam Sandler comedy and then it didn't get used and it ended up on the soundtrack album of the Adam song become a comedy and that's how Paul Thomas Anderson heard it and that's how he then put it and it then became the central piece of Magnolia so there's a there is a weird intertwining of Adam Sandler and but you know an obviously well just because of their associations they have they work with people who work with each other so I saw punch-drunk love and one of the defining moments of punch-drunk love for me is that moment when Adam Sandler's character tries to describe to Emma Watson's character how much he loves her and they have this conversation in which he says your face is so beautiful I want to smash it with a hammer and she says I want to scoop your eyeballs out and eat them and that is kind of the defining phrase of punch-drunk love this kind of jagged off-kilter comedy in love story that's also about a bunch of other things but there is that central thing about Barry that he is like he's like a volcano about to erupt and there are these little interruptions of violence that happened a bit when he smashes the window with a hammer the bit when he breaks the unbreakable plunger all this stuff incidentally which implies that he might be Superman the bit when he tries to fly the bit when he suddenly picks off the gang you know he suddenly grabs the tire iron and takes out for people to be clear we're not talking about one cut ya know we're talking about punch-drunk lovin and I absolutely thought that the genius of that film was that Paul Thomas Anderson had seen the quality in Adam Sandler that always made me find his comedies difficult and had worked with it and I that came flooding back to me watching uncut gems it was like watching a film and it was interesting that they said you know we were trying to do this for 10 years and he was the only person that we thought of that could make it work now what's really interesting is that they said of his character you know he has to be kind of loveable you have to root for him I disagree entirely because I didn't find him lovable and I didn't root for him but what I found was that I found him completely believable utterly mesmerizing completely infuriating somebody whose company I found like I keep going back to this phrase like a rising wave of anxiety and panic and what the film did and I did it so brilliantly that I actually sort of started to feel almost claustrophobic in its company is it's like it grabs you because it ties you to this character who is so difficult I described him as an eternal optimist in with you know the heart of a gambler is is um you know is an eternal optimist again I my thing with beef the gambler is an addict that there's a self demise omits self-destruction it doesn't matter whether or not you agree with how a filmmaker interprets their own film because I think if we're in filmmaker to make a film convincingly a filmmaker has to basically be on site often with the characters that they're working with I thought the genius of uncut gems was it absolutely tied you to a character whose company I found almost intolerable and stuck you with them as they pinball from one disastrous decision to the next in a kind of an unseen unrest ting fidgety anxiety inducing a you know kind of continuum of bad choices and the film itself has a kind of pinballing rhythm and an accelerating rhythm and there are so many points when it's just you just think don't do that don't do that don't do that don't do that and then he does that and he's you know he's duplicitous and he's a liar and he's and he is a creep but he's also this other thing which is that he's somehow kind of manner and what Sandler manages to do and I say this you know believe me I'd said so many times that my problem was every time Adam Sandler made a bad film and he has made many I think this is made worse by the fact that you may punch-drunk love therefore you know the difference between a good film and a bad film I think he should there's no question that he should be oscar-nominated for this because I think it is one of the the most completely engrossing roles I've seen on the screen in ages and I you know I think he he should be nominated at every because it is an absolutely brilliant performance and it has he has produced it because he is working with two filmmakers who I mean in a way this the safdie's kind of defining trope is that their films encompass you and envelop you and they're very experiential and whether it's you know Daniel Epstein soundtrack you know monitor exported ever soundtrack which is kind of always that side kind of boxing you in so what was his name well it's Daniel OPA team but he records as one it's point never my no tricks point never whoever does the soundtrack for good time which I talked about when we were reviewing good time about you know how how important that was to the to the central ethos of that film and of course Robert Pattinson who I've always thought was a very very fine actor right back to the days of the Twilight movies but he he's brilliant in in good time he's absolutely brilliant and of course some Benny safdie's performing in that film he's not just you know he's not just a director he's acting in it as well and again that film has this sort of like I said this rising tide of tension and the about halfway through the film I was watching it I was becoming increasingly anxious but in a really good way in a written way that I was thinking this is really got me I can't you know I can't I can't turn off I can't look away from this it it's I suddenly thought you know this is this has the trajectory and the visceral punch of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant and I don't mean in the way that when people when you cite Bad Lieutenant people think about the excesses of Harvey Keitel's character and some of the things that Harvey Keitel's character does that are you know disgusting and horrible but actually what what matte film is really about is a sort of frenzied you know an increasingly frenzied march towards something some kind of self-destructive redemptive goal that is always just one thing beyond and there is a sequence in in uncut gems when there's something that he really really needs to have and he's been chasing it for ages and ages and ages and he can't get it and if he can't get it soon enough everything is going to fall apart incidentally he's meantime cheating on his wife who we heard in the thing at the beginning when she says you are the most annoying person I have ever made and I will I hope I never see you again and I want haven't you and I want to punch you yeah which does actually sound safer budget love and suddenly there's a moment when the the object that he needs is there in front of him on the other side of a locked glass door and he can't get the door open and it's like it's going to go away it's there the thing that he needs is there and it's going to go when he's hammers and blah blah blah blah blah and the scene is so frustrating and so anxiety inducing and that really really reminded me of that of a quality that happens in Bad Lieutenant in Bad Lieutenant which is the Abel Ferrara with Harvey Keitel makes even more sense if you understand the gambling on the sports gambling that's going on on the radio all the time in the background it's a compressed time period in which it begins with a character in debt and they have to get out of debt and they have to get out of debt through a series of machination that involve insane levels of dangerous gambling and I think that really did remind me of that totally and I say that as a good thing because I think badly talent for all the notoriety it has for its more extreme elements is actually a kind of a textbook lesson in just ratcheting up tension around Adam song because I've talked a lot about Adam Sandler in this he's a terrific supporting cast I mean a really really convincingly terrific supporting past that because there is not a single character in that supporting cast that I didn't believe in and it was interesting hearing the staff yeah yeah but also you know Eric Bogosian zand I completely believed in the family unit I completely believed in the world in which he lived I completely believed in the increasingly absurd situation in which he found himself desperately you know he's always once that his goal is always one step ahead of him and then even whenever he attains it he does something that puts it out of his reach again it's like the whole film is like some kind of conceptual pawnshop when you've got something but you've but you've given it away for the wrong reason and I found him infuriating and I found his character really hard company and I I couldn't look away from the film and like you said at the end of it I had to I had to basically go and lie down it's really something yes and and completely exhausting don't don't have a Red Bull or don't take a coffee in you you do not need stimulant and you will not you know you were absolutely not fallen if you're the most exhausted doctor of all time because you've been working incredible shifts you didn't go and see this movie and you know you're not fall asleep here

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 360,238

Keywords: Josh & Benny Safdie, Adam Sandler, Idina Menzel, Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Uncut Gems, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC, 5live

Id: 3XB6s0PpGPY

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020