Robert Altman @ 100: "Short Cuts" The Film
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 at 1:00PM a two part piece on Short Cuts (1993) to relaunch our Robert Altman tribute
by Eric Blume
It’s a joy to rewatch Robert Altman’s 1993 masterpiece Short Cuts over thirty years later. I hadn’t seen the film since seeing it in theaters, back in the sweet days where Fine Line Features was the “arthouse” division of New Line Features, a mini-studio from which so many fine films sprung.
Upon revisit, it’s easy to see how this film is a perfect illustration of Lightning in a Bottle. Among its incredible cast of actors are future Oscar winners (Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr., Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore), past and future nominees (Bruce Davison, Anne Archer, Lily Tomlin, Jennifer Jason Leigh), plus some other terrific actors who are always rapturous to watch (Fred Ward, Lili Taylor, Madeleine Stowe, Peter Gallagher, Matthew Modine). And then pepper in Tom Waits and Huey Lewis! The talent in this movie is off-the-charts and each actor feels individually inspired. I’m not sure what Altman did to get them so invested in their small, individual stories but together they truly pack a wallop...
Short Cuts is the return to form for Altman from his huge 1975 masterpiece, Nashville. It’s similar in tone and energy, verve and off-kilterness, but I’d argue even more ambitious and deep. Short Cuts is an Altman mosaic -- twenty-two principal actors tucked into small stories that interweave through then-present day Los Angeles.
Mosaic films like this are inevitably about fate and chance and interconnectivity. But Altman goes the genre one further: Short Cuts is about the human inclination, and perhaps even deep impulse, to *not* connect, especially out of fear of responsibility. This viewing, the film seemed summed up for me in a very throwaway moment with Julianne Moore (a painter) on the phone with someone explaining her art. She says, “it’s really about seeing...the responsibility that comes with it.”
a painter and her art
Altman layers that very heavy line into an almost-off-camera take, but that seems to be the center of this movie: a series of moments where people, in rare instances, do see another human being, who they are, and where they’re coming from. But also how, in general, we do not have this vision, nor the impulse to see people.
Altman goes to great lengths in the first half hour of the picture to establish real, working people with families, jobs, complications. His subjects are mostly white, lower-to-middle class people who work hard, have sex, change diapers, lie casually to everyone. When you watch this film, you realize how few films nowadays chronicle “regular” people in their fullness.
As the story threads mount, leading to several devastating turns and an end-of-film murder that feels so oddly true and “earned” (based on the dark psychology of the character), the film gains an increasing amount of power and drive. And in typical Altman style, he laces everything with humor, including a classic moment of accidentally exchanged photographs between Buck Henry and Lili Taylor that is a glorious comic culmination of the storylines.
whoops... wrong photos
Altman received the third of his four Oscar nominations for Best Director for this film. He really should have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay here, too. He was inspired by the Raymond Carver short stories, but completely respun them, so it's a textbook example of actual screen adaptation.
Thirty years later, Short Cuts is vibrant, exciting, and heartbreaking. If you haven’t seen it yet, or not in years, please treat yourself!
In part two I'll talk about the actors.
Reader Comments (3)
Nice read Eric but you didn't rank those performances,I personally feel this film should have brought Moore her first Oscar nomination.
I noticed the Andie MacDowell shade unless you just forgot to mention her as she was one of the most famous women in the cast.
I haven’t seen Short Cuts. but in my teenage years scrolling (and memorizing) IMDb “awards and nominations” pages, this stuck out for winning a rare ensemble award at the Golden Globes. I remember it creating some confusion in my young mind about the cast’s individual Golden Globe records and I weirdly resented it for that!
This movie is really special to me. I was just stunned by it at 14, and it helped define my aesthetic: large casts, actresses galore, lots of talk, male nudity (if only barely).
It has an essential '90s-ness in the same way Nashville has an essential '70s-ness. And every performer in it is fantastic.