파편화와 응집: 레이먼드 카버의 단편소설과 로버트 알트만의 <숏컷> = Fragmentation and Integration in Short Cuts: Robert Altman's Adaptation of Raymond Carver's Works

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines Robert Altman's strategy of integrating Raymond Carver's different short stories and a poem into his art film, Short Cuts. Carver's characters indeed experience insecurity, guilt, non-communication, alienation and isolation in each respective story. They are marginal people who are entrapped in painful situations. Altman understands the spirit of Carver's stories and successfully integrates the seemingly unrelated narratives into one work. As is indicated in the title of the film, the viewers are taken from here to there in the L. A. area quickly by rapid cutting and montage. The “selection of short cuts” is grounded in Carver's poem “Lemonade,” which emphasizes the arbitrary nature of luck in the scheme of things, and the characters are interwoven in the proliferating networks of human interactions. At the beginning, the film connects the characters with the fleet of helicopters spraying anti-medfly insecticide, while the final scene ends with the earthquake. Both incidents touching every character suggest a web of psychological and sociological relationships. Altman's other strategy uses the songs of the jazz singer Tess, in particular the recurring “Prisoners of Life” that provides the whole narrative with a choric effect. Indeed, the song comments consistently and poignantly on the characters' painful anguish in life, strongly paralleling Carver's theme. The cries of pain emerge throughout the film in such various guises as suicides, aggressive acts, inappropriate actions, expressions of repressed sexual anger. In addition, the water and fish are also crucial to connecting the multiple threads of the different lives and situations. Indeed, such strategies of integration enable the successful union of different situations and different plots and subsequently give the viewer a sense of common context.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Nesset, Kirk., "The Stories of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study." Athens, Ohio UP. 1995

2 Boddy, Kasia, "Short Cuts and Long Shots: Raymond Carver's Stories and Robert Altman's Film" 34 : 1-22, 2000

3 Self, Robert T, "Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality:Minneapolis" U of Minnesota Press 2002

4 Scofield, Martin, "Closer to Home: Carver versus Altman" 33 : 1996

5 Campbell, "A Study of the Short Fiction" Twayne Publishers 1992

6 Kolker, Robert, "A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman" New York, Oxford UP 2000