Wes Anderson's adaptation of "The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar" as a forty minute short works beautifully, and so do his three other shorts based on Roald Dahl stories that were released with it. They all feature the same production team and principal actors, and I think that they're best watched together. Add up all their running times, and it's roughly equal to that of a full length feature.
All four shorts - "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," "The Swan," "The Rat Catcher," and "Poison," are told in the same style. Wes Anderson fans will be familiar with the extremely distinctive, fanciful sets, tightly controlled cinematography, and deadpan performances. Anderson pushes all of these elements further than usual, really emphasizing the artifice of his storytelling choices. It feels like we're watching short theater plays, where the beautiful sets are constantly being rolled in and lifted out around the performers. Without leaving the frame, Anderson can travel through multiple locations, or even just change the viewer's perspective on a location. Props are brought into frame by visible stagehands, who come back to collect them later. Costume and makeup changes happen onscreen, and some actors will play multiple roles in the same story.
The effect of all of this is really something special. Even seeing that all the sets are facades, and that a levitating trick is accomplished by having the actor sit on a box that's been painted to blend in with the set if you look at it in just the right way, it's impossible not to be charmed and impressed by all the painstakingly created elements of the production, and the windup clock precision with which it's all deployed. It's like watching a magic trick where the magician is showing you, step by step, how the illusion is accomplished, and still being wowed by the effect. In addition, I came away very impressed with how much skill and artistry are required for such a feat. I found the style a little overcomplicated and intrusive in "Henry Sugar," but it didn't bother me at all in the other shorts, possibly because of the nature of those stories, and possibly because I'd gotten used to it by that point.
Dahl's prose is given special prominence, with a character rapidly narrating each story in the first person, as the events play out. In "Henry Sugar," which runs twice the length of the other shorts, there are actually three narrator characters, as the stories are nested inside one another, with a fourth meta layer provided by interjections from Roald Dahl himself, played by Ralph Fiennes in every installment. The other major members of the ensemble are Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley - notably all male and all British. This is by far the most British production I've ever seen from Anderson. His last Dahl adaptation, "Fantastic Mr. Fox," adjusted the characters so that they could be played by Americans. "Henry Sugar" feels far more like a tribute to Dahl, and adapts more personal material, so sticking closer to the originals feels appropriate.
It's hard to say much about the performances, because they're all so rigidly limited by Anderson's style, but some of the actors are more comfortable here than others. Fiennes and Friend have both worked with Anderson multiple times now, and seem right at home. Cumberbatch puts in a very good effort, while Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley don't seem to have any trouble keeping up. Richard Ayoade doesn't get as much to do, but some of his reaction shots are priceless. Everyone does a great job of never breaking the immersion, while really leaning into the theatricality, and occasionally peeping over the fourth wall.
Despite the fantastical nature of some of the stories, these skew more adult than most Dahl adaptations, and "Henry Sugar" is the only one with an unambiguously happy ending. "Poison" is probably my favorite, for acknowledging the less comfortable parts of Dahl's work that other adaptations have been keen to avoid. The shorts left me curious about Dahl's other short stories for grown-ups, which may have been the point of the whole exercise. And after this and last year's "Matilda" musical, I feel like Dahl's work is in relatively safe hands with Netflix. Little experiments like this shorts collection are increasingly rare, and I'm glad that Anderson got the chance to return to the Dahl universe.
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