'Uncut Gems'

Uncut Gems creates an almost unparalleled level of tension through its use of camera movement and sound. During the scene in which Arno kidnaps Howard, the inside of the car is shot with an extremely shaky camera. Howard is surrounded by men in this cramped space, with three other faces in the shot surrounding his at all times. The camera is close enough to him that the top of his head is cut off so as to remove his headroom. There is constant noise, Howard trying to convince Arno that he can pay him back, Arno threatening him and Arno’s goons yelling and giving orders to Howard. In a meticulous balancing act, the Safdie brothers create constantly overlapping dialogue, all while the movie’s pulsating soundtrack throbs in the background

In this scenario, Howard (and by extension the audience) loses all breathing room - physically, visually and auditorily. Once Arno is finished with Howard, he has him stripped and thrown into his own car boot, where the only thing we see is an extreme close up of Howard's face within an enclosed visual landscape of only black and dark green - the peak of the scene’s ever-increasing claustrophobia - until he calls his confused wife who is forced to come outside and open the boot.

Howard initially is kidnapped in the middle of watching his child’s school play, the implication here being that even in a stereotypically safe environment, surrounded by his family, danger is quite literally a constant threat. As the audience is taken along for this ride where a man digs himself further and further into a hole, the one component of the film that seems out of place is the aforementioned soundtrack. The psychedelic, synthetic music overlaid with enigmatic saxophone has the effect of removing the audience from any sense of being grounded in reality. It pulls us deep into the lofty headrush that is Howards unending spiral.