MUBI

I find it almost ironic in way that Criterion packaged the DVD of this film with the 9 short stories and the poem by Raymond Carver and it made me hate the film, which I loved before I read the source material.

Reading Carver’s stories and poem, I realized how much a disservice Altman did to Carver’s work. First off, let me point out that I am all for adaptations departing from the original, I think it’s also necessary in adapting from one medium to another. I like the way David Cronenberg adapts, he himself said that in order to be faithful to the work one must betray it. But one thing that Cronenberg does is maintain the spirit of the original, which I don’t think Altman does. He’s too busy being clever with his structuring, the forced connections between characters from different stories and relocating the stories from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles. Reading the stories, they feel as if they couldn’t have been set anywhere else but the Pacific Northwest (I’m already weary of even thinking that “So Much Water So Close to Home” was adapted into feature length and set in Australia), the location and the environment define who the characters are, and how they all have ties to these places, to remove them from it just changes everything completely.

In a story like “Jerry Molly and Sam”. Carver is able to convey the emotional turmoil a character like Al is going through with the stress of marriage and kids, having an affair, and an annoying dog he decides he wants to get rid of. In the film, the entire situation with the character, renamed Gene and played by Tim Robbins, is reduced to a joke. Gene feels no real guilt about losing the dog, he only tries to get the dog back because the woman he was having an affair with dumped his ass which left him to focus on his family again and bring the dog back. In the short story, it was guilt that overcame Al to bring the dog back, the fact that he might live to regret doing such a thing, his family remained a mess (Altman ties it up neatly in his adaptation) and the short story ends, like many of Carver’s tales, on an uncertain note.

The biggest crime in the film has to be how Altman and his co-screenwriter Frank Barhydt adapted “So Much Water So Close to Home”, which to me was the most emotionally resonant short story in the collection. It’s a first person narrative by Claire, a housewife who has to deal grief that stems from empathy, rather than experiencing the loss firsthand. Altman turns the character into a clown—literally! What? So as to offset the melancholy? How reductive can one get? Anne Archer does the best she can with the role, but it’s hard to really give the role the focus it deserves when Altman is frequently cutting away from the story to show another story. And her character is a clown, for fuck’s sake.

In fact, all the actors did a fine job, as they usually do in Altman films, the director just has knack for creating an environment that brings out the best performances. But it just isn’t enough. The fluid structuring which initially impressed me when I first saw the film now just feels like a gimmick, although editor Geraldine Peroni should be commended for being able to smoothly transition from story to story.

Ultimately what is lost is subtlety, which Carver was a master of and Altman was not known for.