Short Cuts, one of the best films I've ever seen, is a tableau, a framework that goes over the differing but similar threads of the human condition like it's as natural as can be. In any other director's hands these characters would be just that, quirky and a little too odd or melodramatic or not queued to the right level of comedy. Robert Altman, however, is the perfect director for the material, as he takes all these situations, these stories, these moments of irony, scorn, escapism into other lovers or drugs or some kind of art, of the connection between parents and kids, husbands and wives, total strangers to the dead, and fashions a piece of Americana that (dare I say it) is even more revelatory and funnier than Altman even at his very best, eg Nashville. The layers to it all are nearly staggering, and I'm sure that on just a first viewing I only got the surface of it all, which is excellent on its own. But it's just in seeing what goes on between these couple dozen or so people in Los Angeles- the desperation, the grief, the momentary lapse of reason, the infidelities, hatred, love, all strung together seamlessly, and with the knowledge that the absurdities (and there are many subtle and strange in the three-hour-plus running time) it's got something for everyone.
The cast is ranged from Hollywood professionals, a couple of legends, character actors, Altman regulars, musicians, and it all clicks just right. Elements outside of the characters' control bookend the film, almost as if to add those little touches of anxiety that don't have something to do with the people's choices or bits of circumstance, with a city-wide bug-spraying intruding on some of the characters, and at the end an earthquake snapping them (or not) to their senses. There's a high-strung cop (Robbins) who can't stand the family dog. His wife (Stowe) is the sister of a painter (Moore), who has a conservative-about-sex-minded doctor husband (Modine) who doesn't understand her paintings but even less so her possible infidelity three years before. He's treating a child that got run over by a waitress (Tomlin), whose parents (MacDowell and Davison) can't understand why he's not waking up, and the father is a little more than surprised that his father (Lemmon) has come back after years gone. Meanwhile, Moore and Modine have to have a couple of guests (Archer and Ward) for dinner, where there is tension from the husband not reporting, and instead fishing around, a dead body of a girl in a river. And meanwhile the waitress has a slug of a husband (Tom Waits), and who's daughter (Taylor) has a boyfriend who's...
And so on. That's not all, though if I kept writing more about these characters there wouldn't be much room left in the review. But in what goes on with the characters in a few days and nights time one can see as much as one can know about the characters. The depth of characterization is rich and deep as can possibly be accomplished, and even when a scene feels a little loose in how its acted around, as in a documentary (i.e. the picnic scene), it's still intriguing. Altman's camera follows these people at times finding the rhythm when it comes, and he never misses a beat, and even makes some fresh ones, like a zoom-in as a phone rings for Davison about his kid from a psycho stalker (Lovett), or how he wanders through the jazz club where Tess Trainer does her songs night after night for people who "snort coke and talk." And like something akin to Fanny and Alexander- also a film supremely in touch with human nature's highs and lows- Altman, through Carver's material, mines for the roughest moments of drama and the kookiest moments of comedy, both low-key and high-pitch.
The way that mood weaves around between the sadness, sometimes shallow and sometimes very deeply in hurt, and the bizarre mundane qualities and irony, is also incredible. There's a scene where cop Robbins stops clown Archer, in full regalia, and asks in jest how many clowns can be fit in the car. Or Waits (who probably gives his best acting performance to date) when he gets into a heated argument with Tomlin, but doesn't forget to have a quick drink before getting into the car. Or the racial tension at the jazz club, predominantly black, where Leigh gets propositioned. Or in one of the funniest moments of the film where Peter Gallagher's character, tearing up the place of his wife (McDormand) once finding out she's been sleeping with another man (Robbins), gets someone at the door while he's whittling with the chainsaw saying that his wife's won a prize- a vacuum cleaner. And surprisingly enough, though effectively so, it becomes all the more interesting when characters don't meet, and how through Altman's point of view it's what the people who are together know and don't know about one another, what connections aren't made or broken off, that makes it so compelling.
Altman doesn't kid himself, or the audience, that there are easy answers for the characters, that things will all wrap up nicely by the end with the earthquake. It's by not going for the conventional routes that he challenges the audience, but doesn't make it too obvious. It's in this that he is most courageous and masterful at relaying life's little moments through the behavior of the people, at how there are telling signs of loss (or intensity) of emotional connection. And yet Short Cuts is also truly entertaining, and as one of the first of the slew of 'LA epics' ala Magnolia, Crash and Grand Canyon, it certainly trumps them all for the sense of humor spread throughout, and at the least is the most fearless. At three-hours long, it just isn't enough. A++
