April 11, 1994 -- ``Short Cuts,'' the acclaimed film by veteran director Robert Altman shows a depressing view of the state of American culture as well as showing that Altman is still at the top of his brilliant abilities.

``Short Cuts'' is one of the best examples of Altman's abilities as a director. He is a master at weaving overlapping images, conversations and relationships into a cohesive whole. This film, like ``Nashville'' takes a wide variety of characters, each with a separate story and spins those stories like silk in a web until they all meet in the center. Altman's direction, Walt Lloyd's cinematography and Geraldine Peroni's editing are all excellent, but there is something missing in this film: character. None of the characters in the film has any character.

The people in the film are mostly stupid, insensitive, suicidal, murderous, drunken losers. It's hard to work up any sympathy for most of them.

It isn't the fault of the actors. Lilly Tomlin, Tom Waits, Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Madeleine Stowe, Tim Robbins, Jack Lemmon, Fred Ward, Ann Archer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Huey Lewis, Lori Singer, Lyle Lovett, Buck Henry, Robert Downey Jr. and others all do a good job.

It's just that the film's depiction of human nature is so unrelentingly negative that I was depressed for two days after seeing this movie. Ironically, the film also had many comical scenes. I laughed a lot during the film, but it was the horror, the tragedy and the sadness that stuck with me afterwards. ``Schindler's List'' didn't depress me as much as ``Short Cuts'' did. After all, we did win the war.

I did admire the technique of the film, but the substance of it was hard to take. It rates a B.

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