Don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition.
– Florence Pugh as Amy in “Little Women.”
Oh my God, I’m gonna cum.
– Adam Sandler as Howie in “Uncut Gems.”
I watched a couple movies in the last few weeks that I enjoyed quite a bit. The first was Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of Louisa May-Alcott’s Little Women. I have been a fan of the story since childhood, in particular the 90s film adaptation starring Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder. Me and my siblings watch the movie every Christmas, and the whole family went to see Gerwig’s version over the holiday break. The second film was Uncut Gems by the Safdie Brothers, a neon-tinted, coked up caper movie starring Adam Sandler in a career highlight.
As different as these two movies are, I noticed some parallels between them that I found quite thought provoking. In their own way, each of these films is about the role of desire under capitalism. In Little Women, female protagonists living under a rigid patriarchy are forced to sublimate their own sexual and romantic desires in order to “marry well” and enter society. In Uncut Gems, characters in a distinctly more modern setting fight valiantly to achieve their (often perverse) desires in a dog-eat-dog world of exploitation and cold-blooded capitalism. I would like to analyze these films, and then see what they collectively tell us about desire and capitalism.
Let us start with Little Women. It is the timeless story of the four March daughters, growing up as independently-minded women in the years during and after the American Civil War. Of the four daughters, one (Beth) dies at a tragically young age. The other three (Meg, Jo, and Amy) must navigate the difficulties of entering the world at a time when women were not allowed to vote, and their best chance at a future often rested on marrying a husband of status. Throughout the story, the Marches must choose whether to prioritize working or marrying; their interests or their eligibility; following their heart or keeping food on the table.
Meg is the eldest March daughter, and is initially the most materialistic of the four. Although previously affluent, and certainly not starving, the Marches have fallen into a “temporary poverty” due in no small part to the philanthropy and progressive political beliefs of their parents. Being the oldest, Meg is perhaps the only one of her sisters who remembers a time when life was easier and there was no shortage of nice things. She is sympathetic to her youngest sister Amy when she has no money to bring trinkets to school. It is Meg who remarks that it “won’t feel like Christmas without presents.” This is an important aspect of her character. While she is certainly not spoiled or greedy, she finds it difficult to hide her desires for those things in life that have been denied of her.
Meg’s material desires are presented alongside her status as the eldest daughter and most eligible; because of this, her marriage to a wealthy suitor is considered the best hope for the March family’s future. She is pressured, especially by her Maiden Aunt March, to make herself available to local wealthy young men. The scenes of Meg at dances and debutante balls are some of the most sumptuous and class-conscious in the whole film, showing her fully indulging in the luxurious lifestyle that she desires. At one such occasion she borrows a spare dress from a wealthy friend. The lush pink gown looks stunning on her, and perhaps costs more than her house, but means nothing to the debutante who lent it to her. The other girls at the party, charmed by the quaint poverty of the Marches, nickname her Daisy and treat her like a pet. Although she is ridiculed by another character for enjoying herself so indulgently, and although she is “redeemed” later in the film by marrying a poor man for love, Meg is almost never so happy as she is shown at the ball, dancing and glowing and being fawned over by all.
Jo and Amy both follow different routes than their eldest sister. Both at various times also become the object of desire for their neighbor and childhood friend Theodore Laurence, AKA Laurie. Laurie fell in love with Jo, so he claims, “the moment he laid eyes on her,” and he seems truly attracted to her untamed creative spirit. Courage and convictions are both lacking in Laurie’s own life, and perhaps this is the reason why he desires Jo so strongly. Nevertheless, it is this same “wildness” that causes Jo to reject his marriage proposal and pursue a career as a professional writer instead. Jo explicitly chooses to pursue her personal desires instead of the promise of a life of luxury, and in so doing she foregoes the possibility of said life, at least in the way that it was most commonly available to women at the time.
Unlike Jo, Amy has “always known she would not marry a pauper.” Although she is nominally dedicated to painting, Amy is identified from the beginning of the film as the March daughter most intent on marrying above her station. She remarks from a young age how one has control over who one falls in love with, and frankly appraises her and her sisters’ prospects, chiding Jo for cutting off her hair: “Your one beauty!” A memorable scene occurs between Amy and Laurie in Europe, after Laurie has been rejected by Jo and begun to pine after Amy instead. Laurie criticizes Amy for throwing herself after another, even wealthier young man; Amy counters that it is an easy critique for him to make, as he will be rich whether he marries well or not. Her attitude about marriage is frank: she sees it as her only way to prosper in a harsh world, and her only way to ensure the survival of herself and her family. Love, romance, and physical desire seem to play no part in her decision-making. In fact, she tries to quell her own attraction towards Laurie, as he is not the most suitable choice for her to marry.
At the film’s end, each of the March girls has in some way compromised between their desires and the capitalist, patriarchal reality that they live in. Meg, by marrying a poor man for love, is forced to forego the material pleasures of life that she yearns for; a subplot in the later chronology of the film shows how she still must fight the temptation to buy nice things. Jo, although she is not forced into a loveless marriage in order to survive, must still adhere to society’s heteronormative expectations by pursuing a shoehorned relationship that is heavily winked at by the film (other adaptations have taken this character more seriously, but I admire Gerwig’s approach.) Finally, although she does not marry the wealthiest man she possibly can, Amy does marry Laurie and enters a life of wealth; no matter that Amy is the second March girl that Laurie proposed to, nor that his sudden love for her seems awfully convenient. In a world where marriage can be just as much about economic survival as it is about desire, the two become synonymous.
If Little Women draws a line between desire and economic survival, Uncut Gems blurs that line completely. In the world created by the Safdie brothers, money is desire — it may be the only form of feeling that exists anymore. This point is made explicit throughout the film; our main character, a skeevy diamond-dealer/gambler (Howie) played by Adam Sandler, repeatedly demonstrates that for him, sex and money are indistinguishable. Early in the film, he unwraps a rare diamond with a masturbatory glee, declaring that he is “going to cum” as he gazes into its dazzling facets. Although his relationship with his paramour Julia is on the rocks throughout the film, they always conveniently make up whenever he wins big. Twice in the film — once after he wins his first big bet on a basketball game, the second time after he decides to place a bet of $165,000 — he reaffirms his romantic and sexual desire for Julia only in the wake of a financial windfall.
Is Sandler/Howie’s literal lust for money nothing more than greed? Is he a pure capitalist, for whom money has replaced every other cultural value, even love? I believe that the Safdies are making a slightly more complex point than that. For one thing, despite his moral bankruptcy, Howie is never totally demonized by the moral universe of the film. He cares about his family and spends quality time with them. He is capable of showing tenderness and vulnerability, both to his estranged wife and to Julia. And perhaps most importantly, he repeatedly has his ass kicked by the world around him and the people in it. He is bullied, beaten, and humiliated over and over again, but nevertheless always returns to his feet. In the screenwriting world there is a device called “save the cat,” which refers to any and all ways that the writer makes the audience empathize with the film’s protagonist. Uncut Gems manages to “save the cat” with one of the most laughably sleazy heroes in cinema history.
We root for Howie because, like the March girls before him, he represents the strong-willed individual trying to come out ahead in a capitalist system that is impossible to defeat. Howie’s desire for bigger and bigger wins, no matter the size of the risk, places him in the category of the absurd hero within the existentialist tradition. Like the titular character from the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, or Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, Howie’s appeal does not come from any sort of moral righteousness, but from his ability to keep on aspiring for greatness despite the universe foiling him at every turn. We cannot help but cheer on Howie when, during the film’s adrenaline-fueled final act, he races the odds to win the bet of a lifetime. Even the film’s ostensible antagonist, Howie’s brother-in-law Arno, is overjoyed when Howie emerges victorious — even though Howie has made the bet with Arno’s own money. In a world where “the house always wins,” Howie’s victories against it are life affirming, and suggest that desire and pure pluck can win against even the most rigged systems.
Of course, we know this is not true. The most important element of the absurd hero’s journey is that he can never win; he can only keep on striving until he is defeated. Howie is murdered moments after his win, casually gunned down in an act of petty brutality. And although Julia ends the movie with over 2 million in cash, we can only wonder how long she will hang onto it before she meets her own fate. In the end, the only real victor is the money itself, which will outlive all other characters, because capitalism is designed to protect capital itself, not those who temporarily acquire capital. In a way, Howie understood this. If he had cared about the money itself, he would have held onto it, or found safer ways to invest it. Instead, it was the tantalizing high of victory, the rush of the foolhardy bet, that he pursued. When he dies, having achieved the greatest victory yet, there is still a smile on his face. Capital may have won the day, but Howie put up a hell of a fight.
Although the ending of Little Women was far less fatalistic, both it and Uncut Gems explore the negotiation between human desires and capitalism in a cold, unfeeling universe. The March girls were perhaps more successful at compromising their own desires with the demands of the capitalist patriarchy they lived in, but Howie was able to win more explicit victories against that same system. (His gender and his moral relativism probably have something to do with that.) Both movies also take care to root themselves in the realities of exploitation. Little Women explicitly addresses the legacy of American slavery and child labor in fin-de-siecle America; Uncut Gems begins with a gory accident at a mine in Ethiopia that reveals the human cost at the heart of the global diamond trade. This kind of materialism is refreshing to see on the big screen in 2019.
… but it also serves as a sobering reminder to me that these films themselves are a creation of global capitalism. Little Women comes to us by way of Sony, and Uncut Gems by way of a broader spectrum of private equity. As radical as both films are, and as much as I admire them, I cannot forget those facts or set them aside. Even the harshest critiques of capital inevitably exist within it. All of us are Jo, Amy, Meg, and Howie, negotiating minor victories amidst a long defeat against capitalism. Keep that in mind when you are watching both of these movies, and when you watch the Hollywood establishment clap themselves on the back while missing the point this Awards season.
That said, give Greta Gerwig an Oscar, you cowards.
Salamander Reviews 