It’s Hard To Make A Good Movie About Addiction

But ‘Uncut Gems’ wrecks me every time I watch it

I could write 10,000 words about Uncut Gems. I’m still shocked it didn’t earn one Oscar nomination because it’s an absolute masterpiece. You can hold this movie up to the light like the precious stones it’s named for and see different colors and dimensions every time.

So instead I’m going to write 1000 or so words about why Uncut Gems wrecked me all over again after rewatching it last night. The end of that movie is a real trap door.

I really didn’t expect to love a movie starring Adam Sandler as a New York City jeweler and gambling addict. I don’t want to give away the plot but we get to watch Sandler’s motor-mouthed character, Howard Ratner, experience the very best, and very worst, day of his life.

I have never been a fan of Sandler’s adolescent comedies or his few attempts at treacly drama: he’s a performer who wants to be loved a little too much. But in Uncut Gems, he bravely uses all of his man-child charisma to play a faithless, selfish wannabe conman who is falling apart. Sandler allows himself to be unlikable. It’s a brilliantly vulnerable performance in a pulse-pounding crime flick directed by Joshua and Benjamin Safdie, the Coen Brothers of Queens.

Uncut Gems is a thriller and a drama and, at times, a pitch-black comedy. But it’s also a captivating movie about addiction and addiction movies are almost always boring and formulaic. The genre is comprised of mostly simplistic redemption stories. You know, emotionally manipulative two-act cautionary tales about addicts dramatically destroying their lives and then finding sobriety. I find these kinds of movies to be uplifting bullshit but I also recognize that it’s important to tell people there is hope.

If you know an addict, they can be helped. If you are an addict, you are not doomed. I’ve been sober for nine years and, in two months, it’ll be ten, god willing. I know that there are people out there who understand madness and are willing to guide addicts out of the darkness. I am lucky to know a few of them.

It’s hard to make a good movie about addiction because no one wants to see the truth dramatized: sometimes you stop drinking and you’re an asshole anyway. Recovery isn’t always redemption. For me, it just saved my life. It was always the rudest of shocks to realize my alcoholism wasn’t the reason I pushed people away. I wasn’t cruel because I drank. The booze just made it easier to forget when I hurt loved ones.

There is another basic addiction story and it’s the one that doesn’t have a happy ending. I have friends who didn’t make it. I think about them all the time. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones but, you know, there’s always a chance that I’ll pick up a drink because I had a bad day or a good day. I gotta stay vigilant. I gotta go to meetings.

What Uncut Gems does, though, is show us an addict on the upswing. During the course of the movie, Sandler’s character is constantly dealing, hustling and juggling and even though his personal life is a shambles, he’s still chasing a buzz. I thought it was refreshing to watch an addict enjoy himself. It makes me think Ahab was only truly alive — and happy —with a harpoon in one hand and a telescope in the other, hoping for a glimpse of the white whale.

There is no redemption arc in Uncut Gems. There is just one man betting everything on professional basketball. I don’t know an addict alive during their prime who didn’t regularly risk the good things in their life for another hit of whatever. The tragedy of Howard Ratner is the tragedy of most addicts — regardless of their poison. Ratner is charming and talented. He’s a man of vision. But he’s also unable to plant his feet on the ground. He wants to float above his problems and, most importantly, his responsibilities.

I find it remarkable that Uncut Gems dwells on their main character winning as much as losing. It’s important to understand that addicts have good days every so often. Addiction movies always focus on rock bottom but the view from the stratosphere is just as dangerous. Icarus was smiling until his wings failed him.

A friend of mine recently invited me to a small get-together at a private karaoke room and he was respectful enough to give me a heads up that some people would be drinking there, but probably not to excess. I declined attending not because of the booze. But because I have some very wonderful memories of being totally shitfaced while belting classics like Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart and Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train To Georgia.

Those were moments when I was drunk and feeling good. But I don’t like remembering the fun. Eventually, the fun ended. The fun ended and the pain began. I drank to float, too, but I floated like a corpse in an ocean of vodka. I didn’t want to go to the karaoke room because those good memories weren’t actually good memories. I thought they were at the time but they were just a few laughs before a bottomless sob. Maybe one day I’ll go and create some actual joy. But not anytime soon.

Uncut Gems is a reminder that addicts have their ups and downs and it’s important to understand the ups are as profound as what comes next. The ups are the whole point until they stop and it’s nothing but freefall. I can’t recommend Uncut Gems enough. It wrecks me every time I see it because I’ve been Howard before, thinking I’m smart enough to outrun my demons.

And it is more than just a movie about a gambling addict — it’s also about ambition and family and toxic masculinity. You’ll be stress sweating from the trippy beginning until the credits. The cast is next level as well, including veteran tough guy Eric Bogosian, heartbreaking newcomer Julia Fox as Ratner’s mistress and NBA superstar Kevin Garnett, who turns in one of the best film performances by a professional athlete ever. Roll the dice on this movie.