Short Cuts (The Criterion Collection)

I haven't read much by Raymond Carver, but I think this movie succeeds on its own terms. It's beautifully shot--especially the helicopter/crop duster scenes at the beginning--and it has a stellar cast giving their best for director Robert Altman.If you've seen other Altman movies--especially Nashville--you'll feel completely at home. The running time is 3 hours, but it doesn't seem like it. The multiple plot lines are diverse but never sprawling. The dead, drowned girl introduced at the beginning is supposed to become a symbol of death-in-life throughout the movie but that symbolism never drowns the movie.The plot about Lori Singer as a cellist in a difficult mother-daughter relationship was a highlight of the film to me. There is one moment in the film when she embraces Andie MacDowell after MacDowell's son has died. In that embrace, Singer feels the love MacDowell has for her son that she herself has never felt from her own mother. Or at least that's how I see it.My point is, faults notwithstanding, Short Cuts is an excellent movie about relationships and individual epiphanies. For the most part, it is uncluttered and very realistic in its avoidance of melodrama and easy resolutions to the mysteries of human behavior.

Short Cuts is a typical Robert Altman film. It involves a large ensemble cast (in this case 22 characters) and a high degree of interaction between crew and cast. It is the 25th of Altman's 34 feature films beginning with Mash in 1970 and ending with A Prairie Home Companion in 2006, which makes him one of America's most prolific directors.Altman's directing style is in sharp contrast to that of Stanley Kubrick, arguably America's greatest film director. Kubrick was so disillusioned after making Spartacus in 1960 that he moved to England to get away from the American studio system, which gave producers the right to make the final cut of the film. Beginning with Lolita in 1962 and ending with Eyes Wide Shut in 1999 Kubrick made eight films in England, all of them masterpieces. During a comparable period, Altman made a total of 34 feature films. Not all were masterpieces, but many were great successes, including Short Cuts.From Kubrick we expect perfection. From Altman we expect a bit of anarchy. There is more of a democratic process with Altman as well as the feeling that anything can happen. The extensive special features on disc 2 of this release of Short Cuts give us an excellent picture of Altman's directing style. Kubrick gave us 8 masterpieces, Altman gave us many more.

Based on nine stories and a poem by the late Raymond Carver, Short Cuts is a deeply realistic, broadly written, stunningly structured jazz mural of a city on the edge.The stories, fused together so seamlessly by Altman, were conceived separately by Carver, and only one was invented for the film (a tragic duet between Annie Ross as a drunken, dying jazz singer and Lori Singer--who does her own playing--as her classical cellist daughter). Only two of the tales are in a form fairly close to Carver's. Those are the stories based on "A Small, Good Thing" (about a baker who harasses a couple who haven't picked up their son's birthday cake, unaware that the boy lies comatose after a car accident) and "So Much Water So Close to Home" (about three fishermen who won't let the discovery of a nude female corpse disrupt their fishing vacation).Originally, there were no links among the tales, other than thematic ones--Carver's sense of modern urban isolation, the misunderstandings, petty cruelties, and sad silences. So Altman and co-adapter Frank Barhydt, Jr., made the links and found the short cuts. The ensemble is large: pool cleaners and TV commentators, waitresses and jazz singers, limo chauffeurs and conservative doctors, phone-sex specialists and cake bakers, makeup artists and fishermen. Altman and Barhydt (and editor Geraldine Peroni) concentrate entirely on transitions, leaping from one track to another, making connections between the clusters of characters (think PT Anderson's Magnolia).Part of the greatness of the film, which is one of the triumphs of recent American film-making, lies in Short Cuts's recognition that nothing in life is ever resolved, that there are not only no happy endings, but virtually no endings at all.

Robert altman one of my favorite directors all time...this slice of life in LA was his best work for me..Others think Nashville was his best work.. I stick with Short Cuts.. Combing so many stories and characters into one film is a feat in its own.. But to love or hate all of them is fantastic.. Jack Lemmon was incredible.. Lily Tomlin, Tom Waiits, Mathew Modine, Julianne Moore and on and on..Great ensemble acting, even though it is broken down into many separated stories.. All culminating in what all of us fear somewhere in the back of our minds, an earthquake..That is not a spoiler..You cannot guess how this storyline goes.. A plus....

I love this movie because it consists of separate stories that ultimately bring the characters in each story together at some point in time. The cast is an ensemble of great actors including Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Andie McDowell, Anne Archer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lili Taylor, Fred Ward, Lily Tomlin, Robert Downey, Jr, Madeleine Stowe, Tim Robbins, Tom Waits, Frances McDormand, Jack Lemmon and many others whose faces you'll recognize. It's a long movie, well over 3 hours, but just sit back, watch and enjoy it.

How can an interesting, power packed, star studded, well acted, well directed film have nobody to root for? I had to take it in three doses ( mainly because it is 3 hours long) because it's like one of those phone calls that is interesting up to a point and then you'd wish the caller would just say goodbye. It's one of those films I will pull out a couple years from now to see if I missed anything, and the characters will be as obnoxious as ever.

This DVD arrived promptly and in good condition. I was pleased to find it also included a useful background booklet. I am very happy with the service.