From Adam Sandler to Melissa McCarthy: Why comedians excel in straight dramatic roles
Sandler has received the best reviews of his career for ‘Uncut Gems’. Geoffrey Macnab understands why actors known for goofy comedies are tempted into heavyweight drama
It will be a travesty if Adam Sandler isn’t Oscar nominated for his astonishing performance in Uncut Gems, the new feature from Josh and Benny Safdie. The film itself is a throwback: a contemporary equivalent to those seething, gritty, naturalistic New York-set street dramas of the Seventies and Eighties made by Sidney Lumet, often with Al Pacino in the leading role. Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jewel dealer seemingly determined to live as chaotic and frenzied a life as possible. He is a low-life hustler, hugely in debt but still gambling at every opportunity and trying throughout the movie to sell a rare African opal to NBA star, Kevin Garnett. He is devoted to his wife and family, although he is also having a torrid affair with one of his employees. Ratner betrays everyone but has a charm that allows him to get away with it. From a religious Jewish background, he is a strange mix of sleaze and boyish innocence.
The Safdie brothers’ nervous intensity as filmmakers matches that of their protagonist, who can’t stay still for a moment. Cinematographer Darius Khondji shoots hand-held to add to the film’s giddy, disorienting feel. Sandler, now a veteran at 53, may be best known for goofy comedies such as Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy, but his performance in Uncut Gems takes method acting to places that Pacino and Robert De Niro in their prime might have struggled to reach. Unlike such stars, he has no sense of personal dignity. This means that when, say, his enemies strip him naked and throw him in the trunk of a car, he accepts the humiliation as just another inconvenience and quickly moves on.
As in last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, featuring Melissa McCarthy as literary forger Lee Israel, the comedians are playing characters not too far removed from their usual screen types. McCarthy’s Lee is sarcastic, witty and outrageous, just like the women she plays in all those Paul Feig comedies from Bridesmaids (2011) to Spy (2015). She is also a seedy and pathetic alcoholic. Moments that would be played for laughs in the Feig films have a grim and even tragic undertow. Sandler’s Ratner in Uncut Gems is yet another variation on the comedian’s everyman outsider, squaring up to a hostile world. The difference is that the Safdies bring as much violence and darkness to their storytelling as they do humour.
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