Contains: Spoilers, Light Marxism
Unless we are talking metaphorically, the title Uncut Gems is a misnomer, as there is only one uncut gem in the movie. At the beginning of the film we see the supposedly eponymous gem, a black opal, emerge from the earth during a work stoppage in a mine in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian miners halt their work, or spontaneously go on strike, their outrage is not-translated, because of their members has a grievously wounded leg. Two miners slip away from the confrontation between the Ethiopian workers and the Chinese management to return to the mines. They produce the black opal, the uncut gem. The camera zooms in, first to the surface of the gem, and then into the gem. Despite the name, the black opal contains many colors, in fact, a universe of colors, which flow across the screen like the computer-generated images that used to accompany music on iTunes. But when the camera zooms out from this polychromatic cascade, we are no longer in the mine in Ethiopia. Instead, we are in a proctologist’s office in Manhattan. That is, the camera zooms out not from the opal at all, but rather from the live video-stream of the colonoscopy of one Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Howard, better known as Howie, lies on the table, doped and serene.
The audience should appreciate Howie’s momentary serenity, as the rest of the movie consists of him in near constant movement, whether walking while talking on the phone, driving while talking, or Ubering while talking. Ostensibly, Howie works in the jewelry district in Manhattan, but as Howie makes deals everywhere he goes, it is more accurate to say that he works everywhere, whether he is at home on Long Island, when he should be spending time with his family, or whether he is in his Upper East side apartment, when he should be spending time with his mistress, Julia (Julia Fox). Howie calls her Jewels.
It would easy to say that he calls her Jewels because he is objectifying her. He certainly loves looking at her, even going so far as to watch her undress while hiding in a closet. But Howie also loves playing with words and names, playing with them because he uses them to tell stories and he uses stories to make deals.
Uncut Gems focuses on one deal, one story, that Howie completes in 2012 during the NBA finals to Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett, who like another character, the Weekend, plays himself. Unlike the Weekend, we see enough of Garnett on screen to determine just how unfair life is: not only is Garnett a great basketball player, he is also a great actor. In the film, when he listens to Howie, a combination of intrigue and distrust flicker across his face. Those two emotions are warranted, as Howie is selling Garnett a story that contains whispers of the truth.
But what most intrigues me about this story is how Uncut Gems updates Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism for the 21st century. In chapter 1 of Capital, Marx concludes by arguing that capitalists are in a constant process of deluding themselves when they examine markets. For Marx, like Howie, takes language seriously, and notes that capitalists frequently talk of various commodities like linen, oil or computers as being hot, cool or even passé. Marx argues that such language is not entirely a mistake, that it in fact reflects how capitalists think about commodities as possessing their own power, ignoring how commodities only move because other people pick them up and move them. Marx’s idea might strike you as a bit silly. Surely the people writing in the Business section of the New York Times and the Financial Times understand that oil does not move itself? But what Howie demonstrates, to paraphrase the Marxist Slavoj Žižek, is that commodity fetisishism works even if you understand that you yourself are fetishizing the commodity.
What is Howie’s plan? Basically, it is to fix a bet on the NBA finals. But while in the past people have fixed bets by convincing athletes to lose, Howie will convince an athlete to win. The athlete in question is Kevin Garnett, and Howie’s plan is to make Garnett believe that if he possesses this uncut gem, he will be unbeatable.
What makes Howie’s plan so intriguing is that he enchants Garnett with the stone by talking about its origins. When Garnett comes into Howie’s shop, he has the basketball player lean over a case and look at his phone with a video about the Ethiopian Jews who mine these opals. That is, Howie uses the unusual identity of these workers to build up the power of the stone, as well as justify his current possession of it. (The Jewish nature of this film demands further investigation, as it is possible that it is the greatest Passover film of all time). We quickly see the results of Howie’s enchantment: Garnett is so charmed holding the stone, he crashes through a jewelry case. This accident only furthers to sell Garnett: he asks Howie to loan him the stone as a good luck charm for the upcoming game. Howie agrees after protest. But once Garnett leaves, Howie places a bet on the game, confident that Garnett will play with incredible power now having the stone.
In commenting on the love that commodities have for money, Marx quotes Shakespeare, saying, “The course of true love never did run smooth”. Howie truly loves money, but his road to it winds through New York, Long Island, Philadelphia and perhaps most aptly, a helicopter ride to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. Along the way, Howie ultimately sells Garnett the uncut gem. But now, rather than receiving it with awe, Garnett immediately starts questioning Howie, asking how he got his hands on such a stone and how much he paid for it. Howie answers that he paid $100,000 for it, while demurring on how precisely he got it (the answer: through the stomach of a fish shipped from overseas). But Howie does not back down on the importance of his role. Refusing the idea that a middleman like himself collects unearned profit, he identifies the story of the stone as the well worth the money that Garnett has paid. Garnett then leaves, apparently unsatisfied.
Nonetheless, the fetish holds. Indeed, when Howie watches the final game later, we see Garnett holding the stone, truly possessing it, on the sidelines. Unsurprisingly, Garnett wins. For a moment, Howie is very happy.
But only for a moment. The money that he has bet on this second game was not truly his, instead it belonged to criminals, organized slightly better than the Ethiopian workers. Howie figured that the people he borrowed it from would not mind, considering that they would get back more money than they had originally lent him. But Howie has forgotten a key commandment of a storyteller: know your audience. These men think in terms of money, but they also think in terms of respect and honor. They reclaim their honor not by taking Howie’s money, but by taking his life. The hole Phil (Keith Williams Richards) shoots in Howie’s head bleeds a color similar to the swirls at the beginning of the film.
In his initial beguilement of Garnett, Howie comments how Garnett is a type of stone. This comment was enough to convince me of the sorcerous powers of this movie: what are the chances that the basketball player who is perfect actor for this role also has the perfect name for this role? Howie also explains how the men who mine black opals say that it contains a whole universe within it. That is to say, this uncut gem also contains Howie’s own asshole. Perhaps it also contains another uncut gem.
Unless we are talking metaphorically, the title Uncut Gems is a misnomer, as there is only one uncut gem in the movie. At the beginning of the film we see the supposedly eponymous gem, a black opal, emerge from the earth during a work stoppage in a mine in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian miners halt their work, or spontaneously go on strike, their outrage is not-translated, because of their members has a grievously wounded leg. Two miners slip away from the confrontation between the Ethiopian workers and the Chinese management to return to the mines. They produce the black opal, the uncut gem. The camera zooms in, first to the surface of the gem, and then into the gem. Despite the name, the black opal contains many colors, in fact, a universe of colors, which flow across the screen like the computer-generated images that used to accompany music on iTunes. But when the camera zooms out from this polychromatic cascade, we are no longer in the mine in Ethiopia. Instead, we are in a proctologist’s office in Manhattan. That is, the camera zooms out not from the opal at all, but rather from the live video-stream of the colonoscopy of one Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Howard, better known as Howie, lies on the table, doped and serene.
The audience should appreciate Howie’s momentary serenity, as the rest of the movie consists of him in near constant movement, whether walking while talking on the phone, driving while talking, or Ubering while talking. Ostensibly, Howie works in the jewelry district in Manhattan, but as Howie makes deals everywhere he goes, it is more accurate to say that he works everywhere, whether he is at home on Long Island, when he should be spending time with his family, or whether he is in his Upper East side apartment, when he should be spending time with his mistress, Julia (Julia Fox). Howie calls her Jewels.
It would easy to say that he calls her Jewels because he is objectifying her. He certainly loves looking at her, even going so far as to watch her undress while hiding in a closet. But Howie also loves playing with words and names, playing with them because he uses them to tell stories and he uses stories to make deals.
Uncut Gems focuses on one deal, one story, that Howie completes in 2012 during the NBA finals to Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett, who like another character, the Weekend, plays himself. Unlike the Weekend, we see enough of Garnett on screen to determine just how unfair life is: not only is Garnett a great basketball player, he is also a great actor. In the film, when he listens to Howie, a combination of intrigue and distrust flicker across his face. Those two emotions are warranted, as Howie is selling Garnett a story that contains whispers of the truth.
But what most intrigues me about this story is how Uncut Gems updates Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism for the 21st century. In chapter 1 of Capital, Marx concludes by arguing that capitalists are in a constant process of deluding themselves when they examine markets. For Marx, like Howie, takes language seriously, and notes that capitalists frequently talk of various commodities like linen, oil or computers as being hot, cool or even passé. Marx argues that such language is not entirely a mistake, that it in fact reflects how capitalists think about commodities as possessing their own power, ignoring how commodities only move because other people pick them up and move them. Marx’s idea might strike you as a bit silly. Surely the people writing in the Business section of the New York Times and the Financial Times understand that oil does not move itself? But what Howie demonstrates, to paraphrase the Marxist Slavoj Žižek, is that commodity fetisishism works even if you understand that you yourself are fetishizing the commodity.
What is Howie’s plan? Basically, it is to fix a bet on the NBA finals. But while in the past people have fixed bets by convincing athletes to lose, Howie will convince an athlete to win. The athlete in question is Kevin Garnett, and Howie’s plan is to make Garnett believe that if he possesses this uncut gem, he will be unbeatable.
What makes Howie’s plan so intriguing is that he enchants Garnett with the stone by talking about its origins. When Garnett comes into Howie’s shop, he has the basketball player lean over a case and look at his phone with a video about the Ethiopian Jews who mine these opals. That is, Howie uses the unusual identity of these workers to build up the power of the stone, as well as justify his current possession of it. (The Jewish nature of this film demands further investigation, as it is possible that it is the greatest Passover film of all time). We quickly see the results of Howie’s enchantment: Garnett is so charmed holding the stone, he crashes through a jewelry case. This accident only furthers to sell Garnett: he asks Howie to loan him the stone as a good luck charm for the upcoming game. Howie agrees after protest. But once Garnett leaves, Howie places a bet on the game, confident that Garnett will play with incredible power now having the stone.
In commenting on the love that commodities have for money, Marx quotes Shakespeare, saying, “The course of true love never did run smooth”. Howie truly loves money, but his road to it winds through New York, Long Island, Philadelphia and perhaps most aptly, a helicopter ride to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. Along the way, Howie ultimately sells Garnett the uncut gem. But now, rather than receiving it with awe, Garnett immediately starts questioning Howie, asking how he got his hands on such a stone and how much he paid for it. Howie answers that he paid $100,000 for it, while demurring on how precisely he got it (the answer: through the stomach of a fish shipped from overseas). But Howie does not back down on the importance of his role. Refusing the idea that a middleman like himself collects unearned profit, he identifies the story of the stone as the well worth the money that Garnett has paid. Garnett then leaves, apparently unsatisfied.
Nonetheless, the fetish holds. Indeed, when Howie watches the final game later, we see Garnett holding the stone, truly possessing it, on the sidelines. Unsurprisingly, Garnett wins. For a moment, Howie is very happy.
But only for a moment. The money that he has bet on this second game was not truly his, instead it belonged to criminals, organized slightly better than the Ethiopian workers. Howie figured that the people he borrowed it from would not mind, considering that they would get back more money than they had originally lent him. But Howie has forgotten a key commandment of a storyteller: know your audience. These men think in terms of money, but they also think in terms of respect and honor. They reclaim their honor not by taking Howie’s money, but by taking his life. The hole Phil (Keith Williams Richards) shoots in Howie’s head bleeds a color similar to the swirls at the beginning of the film.
In his initial beguilement of Garnett, Howie comments how Garnett is a type of stone. This comment was enough to convince me of the sorcerous powers of this movie: what are the chances that the basketball player who is perfect actor for this role also has the perfect name for this role? Howie also explains how the men who mine black opals say that it contains a whole universe within it. That is to say, this uncut gem also contains Howie’s own asshole. Perhaps it also contains another uncut gem.