Although it joins two expert craftsmen -- Robert Altman and the short story writer Raymond Carver -- "Short Cuts" is more of a disappointment than a success. It links together multiple stories, going back and forth between them, a familiar Altman technique. But Altman's greatest achievements were satires, and this movie is deadly serious with not many laughs. If the individual stories had been told straight-forwardly (and the length of the film drastically reduced), the several resulting films might have been pretty good -- not great; they are too thin for greatness. But the acting is excellent and the individual stories are good, forgetting the overlapping plots and cross-cutting script. The movie has been described (accurately) as a mosaic. But what makes any mosaic good or bad is the overall impression that it leaves. And the most significant impression "Short Cuts" left with me was that it was far, far too long. The empty lives of Los Angeles residents from different social classes has been told before and more pointedly. For the most part, it's hard to care about the profoundly disagreeable people who populate most, though not all, of these stories. And, clever as always in creating mosaic films, Altman did not in this case display the temperament that made other of his movies truly great. These stories belonged to other directors, not Altman, and they should not have been told in a single film.
Review of Short Cuts
