Volume 40, Number 19 · November 18, 1993
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
By Veronica Geng
Short Cuts
directed by Robert Altman, screenplay by Robert Altman, by Frank Barhydt, based on the writings of Raymond Carver
Short Cuts: Selected Stories
by Raymond Carver
Vintage, 157 pp., $10.00 (paper)
At the outset, but not for long, the twenty-two principal characters in Robert Altman's new movie, Short Cuts, are vibrating with relatively well-founded panic. Black helicopters flying in formations more like the Valkyrie assault in Apocalypse Now than like the hovering med-evacs in M*A*S*H are spraying agricultural pesticide from the sky; and in the suburbs below, people are having two reactions, in dizzying combination: (1) We're in danger, and (2) for all we know, we aren't. Even the TV science reporter is spinning in his trance of equivocation, and the man who cleans swimming pools won't personally stand a hundred percent behind his company's claim that you're more safe in the water, which dilutes the poison.
Review, 2271 words
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