weblogs : azul : short-cuts

I really liked Robert Altman's Short Cuts, which my brother recommended. I strongly echo his recomendation.

Set in the 70s L.A., Short Cuts gets to me as a movie of reconciliation with United States' American culture, a film about how even though people may not always make the correct choices —they cheat on their couples and yell at each other and do some gross things— they are mostly good people, beautiful people, with their own weaknesses, fears, dreams and strengths, often just coping with their own problems; the fact that they do these gross things is often more a reflection of their place in life, the cards they have been dealt, than of the way they would want to be. It allows you to identify with people, even tough they are not as good as they should be and shows examples of cases where people are having strong conflicts but nobody is being evil, they are just missing information about others or misunderstanding them. People can do horrible things but still be beautiful.

That it manages to cast life in this beautiful light while at the same time (1) being a movie where people do disagreeable things instead of a cheesy predictible movie and (2) making it impossible to predict the turns each story is going to take, being full of surprises and unexpected turns (indeed, many of its stories don't having happy endings) made me really enjoy it.

I should put some emphasis on the fact that that is just how it gets to me, a subjective reading. I'm fully aware that, based on 9 short stories by Raymond Carver and lasting 183 minutes, it does have a lot of contents that may allow others to make completely different readings. However, I think this was, at least partially, the intention, as echoed in some of the lyrics. People are just prisoners of their lifes.

All in all, a very good movie. It does a remarkable job of adapting the Carver stories to film, being one of those cases where a movie glows beyond the work it's based on. I'll give it a rating of 9/10.

Discussion (3) Loading...