The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar/The Swan/The Rat Catcher/Poison (2023) - Short Film Reviews

Not content with merely releasing one film this year that explains just about every structural and thematic quirk in all of his other films with Asteroid City, Wes Anderson also put out a series of four short films on Netflix, adapted from short stories written by Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison. And y’know what? I could review each of these individually and call that two days of my month-long blogathon done, but fuck it; let’s review all four of the buggers in one go.

Each short is structured more-or-less the same, with writing that is basically the original Dahl stories transcribed verbatim, while the sets and camera framing split and scroll to accommodate the words. They're like books-on-tape being performed live on stage, like something out of the more experimental corners of Big Finish, and it's an approach that fits for a filmmaker as allergic to simple framing devices as Wes Anderson.

Much like the presentation, the cast is much the same across all four shorts, with Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Rupert Friend shuffling roles throughout, both as on-screen characters and as narrators for each story. The narration style is striking as well, taking the already-wordy writing and delivering directly into the lens of the camera, breathlessly shifting from describing the action to voicing other characters with all “he said”s intact. Both as examples of real-time theatrical delivery, and a chance for some of the actors to flex their voice acting chops (Cumberbatch and Friend in particular make for ideal bedtime story material), it’s pretty impressive to watch, albeit a tad overwhelming if you decide to watch all four shorts right after each other. The directness and speed of the monologuing can get a bit full-on after a while.

The stories themselves are well-picked and interesting in their own rights, from Henry Sugar’s Doctor Strange-esque introduction to Eastern mysticism (one of several reasons why Cumberbatch was cast perfectly), The Swan’s depiction of childhood bullying and cruelty in real Dahlian fashion, The Rat Catcher’s stylistically ugly look at a grim but necessary line of work, and Poison’s breath-catching look at British imperialism and racism. However, when taken together, there’s something of a vague theme tying them all together: The need to look beyond the surface of things. In Poison and The Swan, it’s the superficial traits like race or complexion or just Otherness that some turn into targets. In The Rat Catcher, it's the unpleasantness behind essential services that people rely on.

And in Henry Sugar, it’s the trappings of the material world. Starting off with this short, along with it being the longest and definitely the most substantial, was definitely the right pick on Anderson’s part because it puts the artistic brilliance of the entire endeavour into focus. The thing about film formalists like Wes Anderson is that, because their styles are so upfront and (as I got into a while ago) potentially distracting, the emphasis being placed on the practicality of filmmaking (the sets, the costuming, the colour grading, etc.) is meant to directly draw attention to the fact that what is being shown is constructed. That it isn’t real. It is presented as events that are actually taking place, but it is a fiction.

When putting that into context with the Henry Sugar story specifically, showing a gambler who teaches himself how to see without using his eyes to cheat at poker, the nature of presented fiction is applied textually as being the same as the nature of the material world. That things like money and recognition, the stuff that is constantly held up as being vitally important for one’s own happiness in life, are shown as just being made of the same ethereal matter as everything else in this co-called ‘reality’.

In less esoteric terms, it’s like the scene in the finale of the first Matrix movie where Neo sees the green Matrix code all around him. Seeing the set being regularly de- and then re-constructed throughout the story, the actors consistently breaking the fourth wall, and the writing with its emphasis on the hollowness of material wealth and the lack of personal fulfilment it creates, this engenders a similar effect of looking beyond the surface of what is presented as reality. It adds a lot to the picture of Henry Sugar as this Zen Philanthropist, sharing with the world because he sees no need to keep any of it for himself.

While the rest of the shorts aren’t quite as brilliant as the opening salvo, and Poison in particular can be a bit awkward to contemplate between Wes Anderson’s previous attempts at Indian representation in The Darjeeling Limited, and Roald Dahl writing a story about the toxicity of racism while having some staunchly prejudiced views himself, this is still a pretty sweet collection of stories. Not only is the actual adaptation done well for all of them, but the specific presentation Wes Anderson gives them not only fits snugly into his idiosyncratic niche, but turns that niche into its own story texture to serve as a production that, like Asteroid City, helps to contextualise why Anderson keeps coming back to this insistent dollhouse façade when making films.