I have just fin­ished read­ing Ray­mond Carver’s col­lec­tion of dis­qui­et­ing short sto­ries, Short Cuts, which inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, Robert Altman’s 1993 movie of the same name. Carv­er was a mas­ter of the sub-genre of lit­er­ary fic­tion dubbed “dirty real­ism” by Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Bill Buford. Dirty real­ism is char­ac­terised by depict­ing the seami­er side of life, with down­beat char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing from a kind of inter­nal des­per­a­tion brought about by their par­tic­u­lar life cir­cum­stances. Before full-time writ­ing, Carv­er had worked in Cal­i­for­nia in the fifties and six­ties in a vari­ety of jobs — deliv­ery man, jan­i­tor, library assis­tant, sawmill labour­er — and per­haps inter­nalised mate­r­i­al from see­ing peo­ple liv­ing lives of qui­et des­per­a­tion (to quote Hen­ry David Thore­au). His sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple at break­ing point inspired Robert Alt­man to make the mas­ter­piece we’re about to dis­cuss.

Filmed from a screen­play by Alt­man and Frank Barhy­dt, Short Cuts was inspired by nine of Carver’s short sto­ries (culled large­ly from his col­lec­tion Will You Please Be Qui­et, Please?, pub­lished in 1976). It was set in Los Ange­les (in con­trast to the orig­i­nal Pacif­ic North­west back­drop of Carver’s sto­ries) and traces the lives of twen­ty two prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters, loose­ly con­nect­ed to one anoth­er in one way or anoth­er. The stel­lar cast includes Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Jen­nifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Chris Penn, Jack Lem­mon, Frances McDor­mand, Lori Singer, Andie Mac­Dow­ell, Buck Hen­ry, Lily Tom­lin, actress and singer Annie Ross, and musi­cians Huey Lewis, Lyle Lovett, and Tom Waits.

The film begins with a fleet of heli­copters spray­ing for med­flies, which brings var­i­ous char­ac­ters togeth­er along the flight path. To this back­drop, and with the sul­try night­club jazz songs of Annie Ross as the inci­den­tal music, we see the mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters in their var­i­ous sce­nar­ios slow­ly falling apart. There is too much by way of plot to describe here, but the sto­ries play out in tan­dem and often loop back on them­selves as we see char­ac­ters famil­iar from ear­li­er scenes in the movie appear­ing in dif­fer­ent con­texts lat­er.

I called it a mas­ter­piece for good rea­son: the actors absolute­ly nail the theme of dys­func­tion. There are heart-break­ing scenes, but also mun­dane ones that nonethe­less mas­ter­ful­ly dis­play the human con­di­tion thanks to the qual­i­ty of the actors. It’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma but a com­ic one too, and it swings from tragedy to com­e­dy and back again. It is, like Carver’s orig­i­nal sto­ries, high­ly dis­qui­et­ing but well worth the expe­ri­ence. Here is the film trail­er to whet your appetite but watch the full three hours for an extra­or­di­nary ride.