Short Cuts

"Short Cuts" was, in my opinion, a great movie.  Some of the complaints in the class were about the fact that the movie did not follow the stories exactly.  For the movie, though, I think it was necessary to take the stories and put a new and modern twist on them.  It was interesting because, although there were so many stories, they all related to each other somehow.  Also, the cast was stellar in portraying the characters.  I thought the film was successful in evoking a multitude of emotions.  My biggest problem with the movie was the time restrictions.  Since we could only watch one hour of the film per day, we missed minor parts that ended up being very important to the film.  Furthermore, as the movie was so long, splitting it up between days made following the different story lines very confusing.  The use of multiple story lines was another problem we discussed in class.  I think if we had been able to watch the whole film in one sitting, this would not have been a problem.  I thought incorporating all the stories together was a successful move on the director's part.  By including all the different stories, the director was able to bring so many of Raymond Carver's characters to life.  Since all of Carver's stories focused on different types of people, many different personalities were represented.  With a variety of people, the interaction between characters was very interesting.  The biggest surprise to me was the end of the film when the teenage girl is murdered.  I definitely did not expect it and while, at the time, I thought it came out of left field it seems to fit in with the rest of the devastating circumstances.  I really enjoyed the film, I only wish we would have been able to view it more efficiently.