Short Cuts (1993)

This is a good movie. It is the second time I’ve seen it now, and while it wasn’t as magical as the first time I watched it, it was still quite enjoyable. The movie is told as vignettes of different lives of people who are loosely interconnected, and shows them bumping into one another by chance, as they go through their natural life routine. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia makes homage to this style, in a glossier, big-budget feel, but it doesn’t beat the originality and subtleness of Short Cuts.
The casting of this film is incredible. It reads as a who’s who in big name Hollywood back in the early to mid-nineties. Special props to Peter Gallagher and Tim Robbins, who, in my opinion, are awesome in this film. Julianna Moore is annoying as hell. Something about that woman, in everything she does, just rubs me the wrong way. In one scene she shows her cooter, nonchalantly, while having a fight with her husband, it’s just a gross sight.
The pacing of Short Cuts is what’s really remarkable about this film. Robert Altman makes the whole film seamless and natural. The film is just over 3 hours, but never is there a particularly boring scene. All scenes seem critical to the development of the film.
I definitely recommend this movie for someone who wants to beef up their film viewing repertoire. While the setting and costume tragically date this film, character motive and trajectory are completely timeless. Altman, in the behind-the-scenes, documentary, describes Short Cuts as a lot of smoking, with a dab of alcoholism, and infidelity. In a way this is what life is for Middle America. None of the characters’ are in anyway extraordinary individuals; they are just people trying to get through life as best they can. But drama sweeps in and inevitably people make selfish, rude responses. This film is pretty much showing how these people aren’t especially prone to swallowing their pride, as is the rest of the human race.