In memory of Robert Altman’s passing, I thought I'd revisit one of his masterworks, a staggering film which definitely deserves a look if you for some reason have never seen it. Lest one forgets, Altman's career was somewhat on the wane before the one-two punch of The Player and Short Cuts re-established his critical integrity and reintroduced him to another generation of film school dramatists eager to impress their own brand of ensemble dramaturgy upon the silver screen. The latter movie in particular — available in a sterling two-disc set from Criterion that also includes a small bound copy of the Raymond Carver writings upon which it is based — remains one of my favorites of the director's canon.

Short Cuts’ setting is the dreary, dystopian, pesticide-drenched Los Angeles of the early 1990s, and it concentrates on the interconnected lives of 10 scattered and very different families and individuals, including Matthew Modine’s doctor and his self-centered artist wife Julianne Moore (above, in a rightfully acclaimed performance); Moore’s screen sister Madeleine Stowe and her philandering cop husband, played by Tim Robbins; alcoholic limo driver Tom Waits; pesticide pilot Peter Gallagher (The OC); children’s party clown Anne Archer; and a trio of bonding fishermen played by Fred Ward, Buck Henry and Huey Lewis. Any further distillation of the myriad connections between characters or even the fashion in which their relationships play out is secondary to the cumulative effect.

A cinematic collagist at heart (making this movie’s slivered heart teaser poster, later replicated for its DVD release, especially appropriate), Altman has always had a deft touch crafting thematic tone poems from multiple, digressive narratives. Short Cuts, however, is his crowning achievement in this arena. The overarching subject under the microscope is the innately human frailty of trust, honesty and fidelity. The resultant portrait that emerges may certainly not be one of uplift — like Los Angeles’ sun, it somehow feels both warm and unforgiving at the same time, often within the same scene — but it is absolutely, unflinchingly real and affecting.