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Rating: The Robert Altman films I prefer are "Nashville" and "Short Cuts" (America Oggi). Perhaps because they share a narrative structure, composed of several intertwined stories, and both offer a harsh critique of the "American Dream." But while the former is a politicized film, portraying politics as a carnival, a show, in "Short Cuts" the lives of secretaries, doctors, aspiring painters, waitresses—about thirty people who share the fact of living in the same city and being unhappy—are shown.
Alternating between the banal and the dramatic, Altman tells fragments of life, private dramas of his anti-heroes, anti-heroes in whom many can see themselves. A cynical policeman who only thinks about betraying his wife abandons the family dog for barking too much, somewhere in the city. A housewife makes erotic phone calls while changing her baby's diaper. The life of a well-off couple turns into drama when their child Casey is accidentally hit by Doreen (Lily Tomlin), a fast-food waitress. A nightclub singer sings "I'm a prisoner of life," a title that is emblematic because it alludes to the condition of the various protagonists, losers searching for a better existence, slaves to the nothingness called routine, "prisoners of life," indeed.
The director was inspired by some stories by Raymond Carver, delivering a film about people who love and hate; he shows us episodes of common life, individuals who meet or barely touch, struggling in 1990s Los Angeles to find space, a shred of luck, or perhaps just a bit of love. Altman does not want to teach anything; he only invites us to follow the lives of difficult existences, marked by pain, often absurd. A merciless depiction of reality, human nature, the loneliness of people who do not know how to relate to others. Exemplary in this sense is the portrayal of Paul (Jack Lemmon), Casey’s grandfather, who shows up at the hospital after many years of silence. He does not engage with the child's fate but starts chatting with the relatives of another boy. He does not understand the drama his own family is experiencing, so he talks about his own matters, indifferent to his nephew. Paul is his own center; for him, the only reality worth attention is himself. When it becomes clear that the child will not survive, he leaves without saying a word. In these bleak portraits proposed by the American director, the most vulnerable suffer. The daughter of the jazz musician, a fragile cellist trying to fill the emotional void in which she has lived, attempts in vain to establish a relationship with her mother, an insensitive, disillusioned woman; the gentle girl cannot bear the weight of yet another failure and commits suicide. The film also leads us to meet the aforementioned Doreen and her husband Earl (Tom Waits), who endure a tumultuous relationship due to the man's alcohol addiction. Three weekend fishermen discover a woman's corpse in the river and, instead of notifying the police, tie the body to the bank to continue fishing and relaxing undisturbed. The film ends with an earthquake that causes a landslide but also allows Jerry's (Chris Penn) accumulated violence, stored over years of frustration, to erupt in the most furious way. An earthquake that can be understood metaphorically; no disaster exists after which life does not continue, despite everything.
"Short Cuts" is a film where there is neither dream nor joy, a bitter, hopeless slice of American society, a work that leaves no one indifferent and makes you think. It lasts about three hours, but if we get into the mechanics of the film, if we understand the unfolding of the stories, it is inevitable to be captivated by this sincere work with a true flavor. The screenplay is extraordinary because it masterfully ties together stories that in Carver’s tales had nothing in common. In my opinion, it is Robert Altman's masterpiece, one of the most beautiful I have seen.
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