Short Cuts ***** (1993, Andie MacDowell, Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins, Jack Lemmon) – Classic Movie Review 2123

Writer-director Robert Altman’s masterly 1993 take on Los Angeles, re-created from nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver, is an ambitious and extraordinary creation. The meeting of two American cult masters is fully the momentous movie occasion it promises to be, LA is seen in microcosm through the actions of a group of 22 principal characters, whose lives intersect, some casually, some to more lasting effect, while helicopters spray against an infestation of medflies.

Swapping the Pacific Northwest backdrop of Carver’s stories for LA, the film examines the role of chance and luck on the characters’ lives, with many the stories concerning death and infidelity. Altman and co-writer Frank Barhydt orchestrate the everyday lives of the humdrum stock characters as might exist in a soap opera – such as a cop, a baker, a housewife, a waitress and a doctor – and show them at moments in which they become unique and ‘real’, whether comic or tragic.

The tone is often doomy and menacing even during the film’s early lighter sections. The characters enjoy themselves going out to concerts and jazz clubs, have their pools cleaned, while they cheerfully lie, drink and cheat on each other. But, meanwhile, the spectre of death always looms, like the helicopters spraying overhead. I said it was doomy.

It would certainly be unfair here to pick individual players out when this is a uniformly beautifully acted ensemble piece, in which Altman once again shows his extraordinary unique flair with actors. At awards time, this problem was ingeniously and graciously solved by offering special ensemble prizes to the entire cast.

But, of all this fired-up cast, Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison prove surprisingly special as Ann and Howard Finnigan, a wife and TV star, while Jack Lemmon unsurprisingly grabs his opportunity to stop the show as Davison’s estranged dad Paul.

Tim Robbins is amusing as the randy cop Gene Shepard, and Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore are effectively chilly as a doctor and his artist wife, Ralph and Marian Wyman. Annie Ross and Lori Singer give unexpectedly vigorous and convincing performances as the jazz singer Tess Trainer and her tragic cellist daughter Zoe.

Among the other notables, Anne Archer and Fred Ward are Claire and Stuart Kane, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Chris Penn are Lois and Jerry Kaiser, Lili Taylor and Robert Downey Jnr are Honey and Bill Bush, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher are Betty and Stormy Weathers, and Madeleine Stowe is Sherri Shepard.

Also in the cast are Lyle Lovett (as Andy Bitkower), Buck Henry (as Gordon Johnson), Huey Lewis (as Vern Miller), Zane Cassidy, Joseph C. Hopkins, Josette Maccario, Jane Alden, Cassie Friel, Dustin Friel, Austin Friel, Jarrett Lennon, Danny Darst, Margery Bond, Robert DoQui, Darnell Williams, Michael Beach, Andi Chapman, Deborah Falconer, Susie Cusack and Charles Rocket.

Ross’s singing with the Low Note Quintet provides much of the music for the movie, and just right it is too, working perfectly in tandem with Mark Isham’s jazz-influenced score. Perhaps Lily Tomlin as waitress Doreen Piggot and Tom Waits as her boorish husband Earl Piggot work less well because they seem cabaret turns rather than performances, but they’re entertaining enough and help vary the fabric of the movie.

Altman juggles all these balls in the air for well over three hours in the most masterly showman fashion, though there are the inevitable dips in the middle. If it ends up as an art movie rather than a popular entertainment, it’s all the better for that. Expect sex and strong language.

It was the joint winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 1993 in a tie with Three Colours: Blue and the entire cast shared the Special Volpi Cup award. It also won a 1994 Golden Globe Special Award for Best Ensemble Cast.

Altman was Oscar nominated as Best Director, the film’s only nomination, and he didn’t win, unsurprisingly losing to Steven Spielberg for Schindler’s List. Unlike Venice and the Globes, the Oscars found no way of honouring the acting in this movie. In his lifetime, Altman was nominated for a total of five Oscars, but never won, having to be content with the always awkward consolation prize of an Honorary Award in 2006 ‘for a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike’.

Luck, Trust and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country (1993), directed by Mike Kaplan and John Dorr, is an illuminating feature documentary about the making of Altman’s movie.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2123

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