Danny Darst | Through the Shattered Lens

Opening with a swarm of helicopters spaying for medflies and ending with an earthquake, 1993’s Short Cuts is a film about life in Los Angeles.

An ensemble piece, it follows several different characters as they go through their own personal dramas. Some of them are married and some of them are destined to be forever single but they’re all living in varying states of desperation. Occasionally, the actions of one character will effect the actions of another character in a different story but, for the most part, Short Cuts is a portrait of people who are connected only by the fact that they all live in the same city. There are 22 principal characters in Short Cuts and each one thinks that they are the star of the story.

Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) cleans the pools of rich people while, at home, his wife, Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh), takes care of their baby and works as a phone sex operator. Jerry’s best friend is a makeup artist named Bill (Robert Downey, Jr.) who enjoys making his wife, Honey (Lili Taylor), looks like a corpse so that he can take her picture. One of her photographs is seen by a fisherman (Buck Henry) who has already discovered one actual corpse that weekend. He and his buddies, Vern (Huey Lewis) and Stuart (Fred Ward), discovered a dead girl floating in a river and didn’t report it until after they were finished fishing. (The sight of Vern unknowingly pissing on the dead body is one of the strongest in director Robert Altman’s filmography.)

Stuart’s wife, Claire (Anne Archer), is haunted by Stuart’s delay in reporting the dead body. A chance meeting Dr. Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his wife, artist Marian (Julianne Moore), leads to an awkward dinner between the two couples. Claire works as a professional clown and Ralph ends up wearing her clown makeup while his marriage falls apart.

Earlier, Claire was stopped and hit on by a smarmy policeman named Gene Shepard (Tim Robbins), who just happens to be married to Marian’s sister, Sherri (Madeleine Stowe). Gene is already having an affair with Betty Weathers (Frances McDormand), the wife of a helicopter pilot named Stormy (Peter Gallagher). When Stormy discovers that Betty has been cheating, he takes a creative revenge on her house.

Doreen Pigott (Lily Tomlin) lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic husband, Earl (Tom Waits). Driving home from her waitressing job, Doreen hits a young boy. The boy says he’s okay but when he gets home, he passes out. His parents, news anchorman Howard Finnegan (Bruce Davison) and his wife, Anne (Andie MacDowell), rush him to the hospital, where his doctor is Ralph Wyman. As Howard waits for his son to wake up, he has a revealing conversation with his long-estranged father (Jack Lemmon, showing up for one scene and delivering an amazing monologue). Meanwhile, a baker named Andy (Lyle Lovett) repeatedly calls the Finnegan household, wanting to know when they’re going to pick up their son’s birthday cake.

Based on the short stories of Raymond Carver and directed by Robert Altman, Short Cuts can sometimes feel like a spiritual descendent of Altman’s Nashville. The difference between this film and Nashville is that Short Cuts doesn’t have the previous film’s satiric bite. As good as Nashville is, it’s a film that can be rather snarky towards it character and the town in which it is set. Nashville is used as a metaphor for America coming apart at the seams. Short Cuts, on the other hand, is a far more humanistic film, featuring characters who are flawed but, with a few very notable exceptions, well-intentioned. If Nashville seem to be a portrait of a society on the verge of collapse, Short Cuts is a film about how that society ended up surviving.

It’s not a perfect film. There’s an entire storyline featuring Annie Ross and Lori Singer that I didn’t talk about because I just found it to be annoying to waste much time with. (The Ross/Singer storyline was the only one not to be based on a Carver short story.) The conclusion of Chris Penn’s storyline wasn’t quite as shocking as it was obviously meant to be. But, flaws and all, Altman and Carver’s portrait of humanity does hold our attention and it leaves us thinking about connections made and sometimes lost. Seen today, Short Cuts is a portrait of life before social media and iPhones and before humanity started living online. It’s a time capsule of a world that once was.

In the 1980s, director Robert Altman found himself even more outside of the Hollywood system than usual. A series of films that confused critics and repelled audiences had led to Altman becoming something of a pariah. As no studio was willing to give Altman a chance to make the type of quirky feature films that he made his name with in the 70s, Altman instead directed a series of low-budget theatrical adaptations. These films may not have gotten the attention of his earlier films but they allowed Altman to show off his talents, especially when it came to working with actors.

1988’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was one of those films. Made for television and based on the play by Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was a courtroom drama that Altman brought to life with his usual flair. Anyone who has read either the play or Herman Wouk’s original novel (or who has seen the 1953 film version, The Caine Mutiny) will know the story. In the final days of World War II, Lt. Steven Maryk (Jeff Daniels) has been court-martialed for mutiny. During a particularly violent storm, Maryk took command of the USS Caine away from Lt. Commander Queeg (Brad Davis). Maryk and his fellow officers, including aspiring novelist Lt. Thomas Keefer (Kevin J. O’Connor), claim that, after several incidents that indicated he was mentally unstable, Queeg froze up on the bridge and had to be relieved of command. Queeg claims that everything he did was to enforce discipline on the ship and that he never froze. Prosecuting Maryk is Lt. Commander John Challee (Peter Gallagher). Defending him is Lt. Barney Greenwald (Eric Bogosian), who is determined to win the case even though he doesn’t necessarily agree with Maryk’s actions.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is very much a filmed play. Almost all of the action takes place in one location, a gymnasium that has been converted into a court of military law. We don’t actually see what happened on the Caine when Maryk took control. Instead, we just hear the testimony of those involved. Queeg defends himself, ably at first but soon he starts to show signs of the pressure of being in command. Maryk explains his actions and we want to believe him because he’s played by fresh-faced Jeff Daniels but, at the same time, there’s something a little bit too smug about his declaration that Queeg was not fit for command. The other officers on the Caine testify. Under Greenwald’s skillful cross-examination, Queeg is continually portrayed as being a flawed officer. But only Greenwald understand that Queeg was isolated not only by the loneliness of being in charge but also by members so his own crew, like Keefer, who hated the Navy and didn’t want to take their part in the war effort seriously. As a Jew who is very much aware of what’s at stake in the war, Greenwald has mixed feelings about the way that Queeg was treated. It ends with a party, where a drunk Greenwald calls out the true architect of The Caine Mutiny. As opposed to the way the scene was portrayed in the 1953 film or in Willam Friedkin’s recent adaptation), Altman focuses not so much on Greenwald but on the party occurring around him. If the other versions of this story ended on a note of triumph for Greenwald, this one ends on a note of sadness with Greenwald’s words being almost unheard by the officers of the Caine.

Altman gets excellent performances from the entire cast and, even more importantly, he avoids the downfall of so many other theatrical adaptations. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial may be a talky film and it may largely take place in only one location but it’s never boring. Altman’s camera is continually prowling around the makeshift courtroom, reflecting the tension of the case in every movement. The end result is one of Altman’s best theatrical adaptations.