SHORT CUTS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Several unrelated stories by Raymond Carver are braided together into one overly-long telling. Carver's Pacific Northwest tales are moved to Los Angeles. Unfortunately none of the individual stories is particularly interesting and the whole is little more than the sum of those parts. Rating low +1 (-4 to +4).
By all accounts the stories of Raymond Carver are strong on describing the texture of life in the Pacific Northwest, but plotwise have been described as "minimalist." In SHORT CUTS, Robert Altman relocates those stories to give a feeling for the texture of life in Los Angeles. In fact, they probably could have been moved to Massachusetts, Texas, or Wisconsin without doing much harm. The narrative approach is a lot like that of 1980's SERIAL, though the end result is neither so cohesive nor so humorous.
There is no single unifying element to the stories tied together in SHORT CUTS, though many of the plotlines do involve men who act selfishly and in unfeeling ways. A philandering traffic cop secretly rids himself of the family's obnoxious but loved dog. Some friends on a fishing trip put off reporting the discovery of a body in order to get in more fishing. An alcoholic keeps pestering his long-suffering wife who seems unaccountably to love him in spite of his personality. Another man executes a painstaking revenge against his former wife. Revenge is also on the mind of another man who terrorizes a woman over what seems like a trivial offense. This film is over three hours long to tell all these stories simultaneously, yet none of the stories is particularly enthralling in itself. What becomes more interesting is the manner in which these minor stories are tied together with each story touching nearly all the others. However, that also strains the credibility a bit since all these people have dramatic stories which start within hours of each other and end the same way. The main story line is of Ann and Howard Finnigan (played by Andie McDowell and Bruce Davison) facing a crisis when their son is hit by a car. Ralph and Marian Wyman (Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore) have unfinished business about and incident in Marian's past. Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) can't quite come to terms with his wife's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) phone sex business. And the list of plots could go on and on.
Robert Altman directs and co-authored the screenplay with Frank Barhydt. The style is remiscent of NASHVILLE with its set of intertwined stories, but without nearly so much a sense of why tell this particular set of stories. Perhaps one advantage to this manner of story-telling is to allow the viewer to see the diversity of lifestyles that can be found in one small community. The stories include liberal amounts of female nudity, often with no more necessity than to dress up (or undress) a scene. There are several scenes of light comedy, warm humanity, or cold tragedy. One sequence will seem very timely but at the same time the flaws of the sequence will be more obvious than when the film was made.
SHORT CUTS is yet another film this year that did not quite come up to most critic's estimation. My rating is low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
The Raymond Carver stories adapted in SHORT CUTS as reported in VARIETY are "Jerry and Molly and Sam," "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?," "Collectors," "Neighbors," "A Small Good Thing," "So Much Water So Close to Home," "They're Not Your Husband," "Vitamins," "Tell the Women We're Going," and the poem "Lemonade."
Mark R. Leeper
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