Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), based on Raymond Carver's short stories, employs many very famous actors, and the action lasts over three hours, during which we observe a wide variety of stories from the lives of 22 characters, who from time to time randomly intersect with each other. If at first you think that we are dealing with
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Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), based on Raymond Carver's short stories, employs many very famous actors, and the action lasts over three hours, during which we observe a wide variety of stories from the lives of 22 characters, who from time to time randomly intersect with each other. If at first you think that we are dealing with a satirical comedy, in which the author shows us very strange actions of the characters, then over time, tragic notes appear. It all starts with a squadron of helicopters circling over Los Angeles, spraying some kind of repellent to fight a Mediterranean fly. Whether from this toxic chemical, or just by themselves, some heroes begin to go crazy and commit strange acts. First, the waitress knocks down a boy in her car, carelessly running out onto the road, at first everything seems to be fine with the boy, he gets up and goes home himself, she seems to be also worried, at least she always remembers this incident and talks about him, but she never thinks of going to the police, especially since her alcoholic husband, who works as a limo driver, is constantly spinning under her feet. The most seemingly normal couple are the boy’s parents, who are naturally hard-pressed because the boy first falls into a coma and then dies. The doctor who treats him in the hospital is considered a very good specialist, but his head is clearly not occupied with what we see in his home in conversation with his artist wife. The husband of the sister of this artist is an avid fisherman who goes fishing for a weekend with friends, where they find the corpse of a young woman in the water, the only thing they have enough “mind” is to tie the corpse to the shore so that it does not take off, and photograph, do not stop fishing, she is still dead, police say only on Monday. His wife is much more concerned about it and even goes to church for the funeral of this young woman. Another couple is a helicopter husband who is kicked out by his wife and decided to take revenge on her in the wildest way when she left with a friend and son for the weekend. Another couple - he cleans the pools, she earns sex on the phone, not at all shy of the presence of children and saying all these texts on the phone in front of them, leading even his sloppy husband to bewilderment, maybe because of this, or maybe because of something else ripened in his obviously not quite normal head, he also commits a completely wild act, killing a stone young girl with whom he and his friend wanted to have fun while their wives were waiting for them nearby. And a bunch of all sorts of actions committed by other characters, from which we can draw quite definite conclusions about the absence of these people any moral principles and attitudes, they do not think about anything at all, they are guided by their momentary whims. We watch them and get sick at heart, how many people are there around us? And what can you expect from them that a normal person will not come to mind?
The film is shot in a typical Altman manner, it is not the first time he uses this technique of editing unrelated stories, but some connection is traced, the world is small, the characters clash with each other. The actors, of course, play well, because it is not for nothing that he collected such an acting ensemble - here even Jack Lemmon appears in a small role, as well as Julianne Moore, Tom Waits, Francis McDormand, Andy McDowell, a very young Robert Downey Jr. and many others. The film is very interesting, I think it is worth watching, if you do not tune in to an easy spectacle, because comedy is indicated as one of the genres, but this is a very peculiar comedy, which does not pull you to laugh at all.