Why Is The Final Shot Of 'Uncut Gems' Haunting Me?
This is all about the last few seconds of Uncut Gems, so if you’ve not seen it yet and don’t want the ending completely ruined then you’re probably best avoiding.
You’re probably absolutely sick of the hype around Uncut Gems now, but if we’ve learned anything from Uncut Gems it’s that there’s always room for one more person to shout at the same time.
On first viewing it's an absolute cacophony from start to finish, whether Adam Sandler’s motormouth Howard Ratner is darting around New York’s diamond district placing bets with other people’s money or being bundled naked into his own car boot after placing bets with other people’s money.
But the bit I can’t stop thinking about is the first bit of proper peace and quiet in the whole film. It’s the final 30 seconds or so before the credits roll, the point where you feel like somebody's finally turned off the fire hose of twists and tension that's been blasting you for two hours.
Howard’s laid out on the floor of his shop as the heavies ransack it around him. We zoom slowly into Howard’s face as blood blooms from the back of his head, then slowly into the gunshot wound in his cheek. That bleeds into the subatomic cosmos, then back into what looks like the Ethiopian mines which Kevin Garnett’s mystical black opal was dug out of, and finally into the constellations of the night sky.
It’s trippy and, with Daniel Lopatin’s droning, twinkling synth score, absolutely haunting. We started the film flying through the opal and into Howard’s colon, and it ends back inside both Howard and the opal and all of time and space. Noah and Gooey in the pawn shop laugh when Howard tells them that Garnett thinks the black opal has magic powers, but there’s definitely something there. The "old-school Middle Earth shit" Howard tells Garnett about is real.
But before we get there, there’s the final shot of Howard. He’s got his oval-lens rimless shades with the gradient tint on. Those shades are not and never were at all cool. Something about them is incredibly dark, though. Whenever Howard's got them on, it means Evil Howard's around – the Howard who really believed the next high would finally satisfy him, the one who could clear his debts but goes for the Hail Mary bet of a lifetime. He's the face of the gambling addiction that eats away at everything he ever had – family, Julia, business, home.
Most haunting of all, he still has a grin spread all over his face. It's the same grin he gives Gary the bookmaker when Gary tells him his first bet on Garnett is "the dumbest fuckin' bet I ever heard of".
"I disagree, Gary," Howard says, teeth bared. "I disagree."
Add it all together, and you get an ending that's far more spacey and contemplative than a man like Howard – reckless, destructive, selfish, jealous, angry – would seem to deserve. That's not to say you don't root for him, and want him to settle his debts and be good to his kids and less obnoxious to his wife. He is, though, clearly an arsehole.
What that grin says is that in spite of everything, Howard won. He could never have got out and cleaned up and gone straight. He was an addict. He and Julia would have burned through that $1.2 million easily and got into deep water again. There were no bigger scores he could have got. He wanted it all, and he got it all, and he went out on top.
That might be why that final shot won't leave me alone. Howard got shot, and he got his happy ending.
Uncut Gems is out on Netflix from 31 January
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