In his film, Short Cuts, Robert Altman uses several techniques to bring the selected short stories of Raymond Carver together into a cohesive film. These mechanisms, however, are not simply devices to keep the stories in continuity. Altman masterfully uses these tools not only to show the audience that the stories are related to each other, but also, in many cases, to further the plots of the stories and express the themes of the film.
When the opening credits roll and the audience sees shots of planes flying overhead dropping poison in the battle against the med flies, the first method of linking the stories together has already been put into motion. This sequence, however, is not just a linkage device. It also gives us our first introduction to the central characters. As the planes fly over each house, we are given a glimpse into the lives of its inhabitants. How the different characters react to the spraying immediately shows their varying personalities. Gene Shepard serves as a perfect example. While most other characters hurry to get their families inside and away from the spray, Gene refuses to let the dog in the house and out of the potential danger of the poison, despite the desperate urging of his wife. When their altercation escalates, he takes it upon himself to go outside with the dog and allow the poison to rain down on both of them. After this early scene, the audience is aware of Gene’s propensity toward macho posturing and his need to feel authoritarian in all situations.
Also early in the film, the audience sees that the character of Howard Finnegan, the husband from the short story “A Small, Good Thing”, has been altered so that he is now a local news anchor. This unique idea is another way of reminding viewers that the characters to which they are being introduced are, in fact, all part of the same community. When we see Howard’s face on the televisions in the homes of otherwise unrelated characters like Gene Shepard and Jerry Kaiser, we understand that these people are in the same town at the same time.
The concept of Howard as the anchorman also works to bring to the forefront another major theme from the works of both Carver and Altman. This is the idea that people who seem as though they have their lives under control and enjoy normal, uneventful existences, often conceal major conflicts and sorrow that occur underneath the surface. As various other characters from the town watch Howard give his pristine, stoic delivery of the nightly news, they likely imagine that he is a wealthy, successful man who lives a comfortable life. They could not possibly know that his life will be completely shattered by a random accident, when his son is hit by a car.
Another linkage device is the earthquake at the conclusion of the film. Like other such devices, its most obvious purpose is to once again unite all the characters in the same coherent universe. We see all the major characters from the story dealing with the same natural disaster as shots from each household are displayed.
Like all of the other methods used to unite the stories in the same world, there is more to this device than meets the eye. The addition of the earthquake also advances the theme, present in both the short stories and the film, of how random occurrences can completely change the landscape of a person’s life. In an amazing stroke of either luck or misfortune, depending from which character’s lens the story is viewed, the earthquake hits at precisely the same time that Jerry Kaiser murders the young woman with the rock. A newscast shortly after reveals that the police have presumed the woman to have been killed by falling rocks from the earthquake. From this we are able to see how a random, one-in-a-million occurrence can grant a guilty man freedom for the rest of his life.
In order to bring all the Carver stories together into a coherent movie, methods of linking the characters and stories together were obviously necessary. With a lesser director at the helm, the purpose of the devices may have ended there. Altman, in a brilliant piece of filmmaking, makes the plot devices mean something more.
