Critics reviews

If it seems somewhat facile now – the conceit of constructing a feature film out of a diversity of distinct narratives – it is only because Robert Altman so successfully popularised it: first with Nashville (1975) then A Wedding (1978), and much later in Short Cuts (1993). It is only by remembering Altman's place at the vanguard of this style that as contemporary viewers we can begin to appreciate the breathtaking ambition of a film like Short Cuts.

Disasters, natural and otherwise, touch everyone in the film and serve as unifying devices, providing thematic resonance to the characters' scattershot, middling lives. At three hours, SHORT CUTS is epic in scale and subject matter, showcasing Altman's brute force brilliance: it isn't always pretty, but damn if it doesn't work.

An L.A. jazz rhapsody that represents Robert Altman at an all-time personal peak... For anyone who believed that what American movies needed most, after the often-moribund cinematic eighties, was more of the old Altman independent spirit and maverick brilliance—and more of a sense of what the country really is, rather than what it should be—the director's sudden cinematic re-emergence with 1992's The Player and 1993's Short Cuts was an occasion for bravos.

The marvellous performances bear witness to Altman's iconoclastic good sense, with Tomlin, Waits, Modine, Robbins, MacDowell and the rest lending the film's mostly white, middle-class milieu an authenticity seldom found in American cinema. But the real star is Altman, whose fluid, clean camera style, free-and-easy editing, and effortless organisation of a complex narrative are quite simply the mark of a master.

The film is mainly based in a small, suburban enclave of Los Angeles, and deals exclusively with the experiences of the white middle-classes, but it still has that magic sense of unfolding in almost real time, and of offering a multiplicity of perspectives.

The good news about Short Cuts is that it's Altman soup--with a few characters and situations from Carver stories tossed in for flavor--and for all its flaws it's real art, packed with irony. The bad news is that Altman's conception of art won't rest with the intricate processes he sets in motion, but has to incorporate high-flown generalizations about them to give his audience a sense of superiority.