Short Cuts (1993)
Cast: Andie MacDowell, Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins
Director: Robert Altman
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage for TIFF’s Company Man: The Best of Robert Altman. For more information on upcoming TIFF film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.
A sprawling LA cityscape twinkles in the distance as helicopters are filled with poisons to spread across the landscape and eradicate some treasonous foe. The helicopters take to the skies in an explosion of light and fly in tight military formation, looming over the heads of all 22 primary characters of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts as they occupy the disparate spaces of America’s most schizophrenic wonderland and silently contemplate when the exact moment was that their dreams evaporated into the toxic night sky. The choppers rain poison over seedy neon jazz joints and classical music halls alike while talking heads from the infancy of twenty-four hour news television pontificate and politicize with wanton abandon to twist complex issues into more easily digestible bullshit. High society and low society slink through the toxic rain, united by their cohabitation of the sprawling virulent wasteland and mutual hatred and mistrust of one another.
A unique and daring narrative structure gives nearly every character in Short Cuts a chance to guide us through their version of LA, a city with enough space to accommodate all of their different flavors of pain and joy.
A unique and daring narrative structure gives nearly every character in Short Cuts a chance to guide us through their version of LA, a city with enough space to accommodate all of their different flavors of pain and joy. There are all-night coffee shops pulled from the lyrics of Tom Waits songs with Waits himself playing a streetwise limo driver trying his level best to stay with his waitress wife “until the wheels fall off”. Lily Tomlin has the “Maxwell House eyes” and “marmalade thighs” to capture the dreams of many a solitary sailor, only lacking the “scrambled yellow hair” of Waits’ Irene in The Ghosts of Saturday Night as she slaves through the night to make a living at the cost of her dignity and sanity. There are smoky jazz joints filled with disinterested audiences, carrying on their private conversations as an older cabaret singer wrings the soul from her body onto the modest stage in a nightly ritual of therapeutic self-destruction. There are irritable pool guys and grumpy bakers, both unwilling to make even the slightest unnecessary effort as extra money isn’t motivating enough to get them to swallow one more ounce of bullshit. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a phone sex operator that sells false fantasies to desperate men while she takes care of her children, eroticism and sexuality operating in a warped but honest context as she changes diapers and gets men off with equal malaise.
Short Cuts illustrates our nearly imperceptible connectedness and the universal tragedies of the human condition despite the very different worlds we invent for ourselves to hide in.
Kids are brought up in this toxic wonderland inundated by the environmental messages of Captain Planet and the Planeteers as municipal workers engage in environmental genocide, but their parents are too preoccupied with their own selfish needs to know if this irony is lost on their children. Some children are ignored outright while others are showered in ineffectual affection, but neither the disinterested nor the overbearing parent really knows what their child is thinking or feeling as it never occurred to them to communicate with their kids like actual human beings. They are given stimulating toys aimed at honing their intellect and dexterity but are given no lessons on how to live and operate among other people as functioning members of society because their parents are clueless on such matters, ensuring that dysfunction will thrive for at least a few more generations.
Short Cuts illustrates our nearly imperceptible connectedness and the universal tragedies of the human condition despite the very different worlds we invent for ourselves to hide in. It would go on to inspire the works of many filmmakers to follow, most notably the films of Paul Thomas Anderson who weaves his own LA stories into intricately connected ensemble pieces that show the entire spectrum of human tragedy by studying it from every angle. Short Cuts shows an unparalleled mastery of filmmaking that requires many attentive viewings to follow each illustrious thread that constitutes the rich tapestry of depravity, tragedy, and elation as Altman explores the human condition from skid row to the insular worlds of the super wealthy and paints a complete picture of Los Angeles and the human soul, both equally fragmented and beautiful and both filled with boundless mysteries and dark secrets.
Short Cuts shows an unparalleled mastery of filmmaking that requires many attentive viewings to follow each illustrious thread that constitutes the rich tapestry of depravity, tragedy, and elation as Altman explores the human condition from skid row to the insular worlds of the super wealthy and paints a complete picture of Los Angeles and the human soul, both equally fragmented and beautiful and both filled with boundless mysteries and dark secrets.
