Films › Editing
Uncut Gems
Directed by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, 2019
Editor Ronald Bronstein and Benny Safdie cut the film to sustain an almost unbroken state of anxiety, overlapping dialogue and layering simultaneous conversations so the audience rarely gets a clean beat to process what just happened. Study how scenes are frequently cut before a line of dialogue finishes, or cut into the middle of an argument already in progress, denying the audience the establishing information a conventional edit would provide first. The editors favor long lenses and crowded frames left largely intact rather than broken into shot-reverse-shot patterns, so chaos plays out within the frame and the cut is used sparingly to intensify rather than to organize. Notice how the basketball broadcast footage is intercut with Howard's reactions late in the film, matching real-time sports tension to the character's financial gamble, a structural choice that ties external, uncontrollable stakes directly to the editing rhythm. The film rarely allows a quiet transitional moment; even scenes of ordinary logistics are cut with propulsive urgency, refusing the audience any rest.
What to watch for
Notice how often scenes are cut into or out of mid-sentence, denying clean beats of resolution.
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