Short Cuts
January 2005 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Have you considered how the people around you alter your life, sometimes radically, every day, and how their lives are altered by your existence? This is the central theme of It's a Wonderful Life, but in 2005, we know that life isn't always wonderful. Sometimes it is what it is, and other times it is a picture of misery. Short Cuts is a movie that's honest enough to admit this. It doesn't attempt to answer the big questions, but it does make you think about an individual's place in today's world, and does so with wisdom and wry humor -- two of the building blocks of modern life.

Short Cuts follows 22 characters who live as unsuspecting neighbors. They come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and have different problems and levels of ability in dealing with them. But their stories, each interesting, intersect and make for a movie that echoes real life. Short Cuts is based on the short stories of Raymond Carver (a paperback copy of the stories is included), but it diverges from Carver's locations in the Pacific Northwest, setting the characters in a much more fertile place for film: Los Angeles. The characters -- a waitress, a doctor, a police officer, a limo driver, a phone-sex operator, a baker, and a helicopter pilot, along with housewives, musicians and many others -- interact, often unknowingly. In the end, their lives converge because of their proximity to one another. Director Robert Altman has made other ensemble films, most notably Nashville, but none of them reaches the heights of Short Cuts, where verisimilitude balances artfulness. The characters are not cheerful, effervescent people, but they are genuinely portrayed, which heightens interest in their lives. We are no different from them.

I was surprised that Short Cuts hadn't made it to DVD until now, but after seeing this sumptuous edition, I'm glad for the wait. Criterion Collection has done it right, creating a package that is a graduate-level class in film. The 2.35:1 transfer resembles film due to its rich color palette, crisp detail, and complete lack of noise and grunge. Extra features take up an entire disc and include audio interviews and conversations, along with documentaries on the life of Raymond Carver and the making of the movie. The latter, Luck, Trust and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, is the sort of feature-length documentary that you wish were made about every great movie.

Short Cuts is a great movie, a masterpiece, and the best DVD release to come my way in 2004. Its sober, interlocking view of humanity shows people fighting with their demons -- not winning, but persisting. Watch it when you feel like a dose of the truth along with your entertainment.

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