Wes Anderson started his profession with shorts. 4 years earlier than making his characteristic debut with 1996’s Bottle Rocket, the thought first began as a brief starring two then-unknown actors, Owen and Luke Wilson. As Anderson’s profession and ambitions have each grown, he’s usually returned to shorts and at all times made them fascinating endeavors, whether or not in The Darjeeling Restricted’s prologue brief movie, Resort Chevalier, the Italian movie homage of Castello Cavalcanti, and even his good American Specific business.
That is what makes The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar—the primary in a sequence of 4 shorts made for Netflix primarily based on Roald Dahl tales—such an ideal mission for Anderson. Not solely has Anderson confirmed earlier than that he’s wonderful at adapting Dahl, as seen within the 2009 stop-motion animation movie, Improbable Mr. Fox, however his shorts usually really feel like a spot the place he can play and experiment, with out the identical stress to make a Grand Budapest Resort or The Royal Tenenbaums-level movie—but he nonetheless provides the story at hand the identical care and consideration. Even Anderson’s 2021 anthology movie, The French Dispatch, confirmed the director’s penchant for shorts and, given how gargantuan and complicated his movies can usually turn into, it’s a welcome change to see Anderson work in a medium that’s a bit scaled-back, however with the identical degree of aspiration that we’ve come to anticipate from his movies.
Not less than with this primary brief on this mission, it’s onerous to think about anybody higher suited to adapt The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar. Even the construction of this brief story feels completely Andersonian, as we start with Roald Dahl himself (performed by Ralph Fiennes), telling the story of Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy, single man in his 40s, who Dahl says is of a kind of rich males who’re “not notably unhealthy males, however they’re not good males both—they’re merely a part of the ornament.” As if that wasn’t sufficient, Sugar finds and reads a report referred to as “The Man Who Sees With out His Eyes” written by Dr. Z.Z. Chatterjee (Dev Patel), which is about, nicely, precisely what the title describes. Inside this story, the titular man, Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley), additionally describes his personal beginnings in how he discovered to achieve these powers. Anderson usually likes to discover this kind of Inception-esque approach of telling a narrative, which makes it all of the extra good that this all comes from Dahl’s authentic story.
All through this story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story, Anderson performs The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar as if all his characters know they’re in a brief, determined to suit your complete story into an agreed-upon 38 minutes. Every of those 4 characters narrate their very own story, including little asides and flying by means of Dahl’s story, virtually like they’re daring Anderson to maintain up with them and their rapid-fire recitation. By the top of Henry Sugar, we see how all 4 of those varied narratives have intertwined and interwoven and left a mark on one another. The story itself is likely to be a brief, however the initiative inside this story is something however.
Like in The French Dispatch and Anderson’s different movie from this yr, Asteroid Metropolis, it’s awe-inspiring to look at him throw all of his skills and types into one story. Right here, we get bits of stop-motion, animation, and a humorousness that enables for sensible, enjoyable little digicam methods. For instance, late within the movie, Cumberbatch’s Henry Sugar tries on a sequence of disguises, and each Anderson and Cumberbatch by no means miss a beat in having the actor go away the body, and return every time with an much more ridiculous costume than the final. Even having a personality drive down the road with a pretend background Anderson isn’t even attempting to cover, or preserving one of the crucial rowdy scenes within the movie off-screen are simply among the enjoyable little touches that make every scene purposeful and intentionally dealt with.
But the way in which Anderson handles The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar additionally turns him into his personal model of Rushmore’s Max Fischer—an formidable director trying to inform a grandiose story with an abbreviated time and smaller forged. Anderson treats every situation like its personal play, with remarkably spectacular shifting units, fast adjustments of make-up and costume, and his personal little troupe of gamers, every of whom performs a number of characters all through. We’ve at all times recognized Anderson is a grasp craftsman inside his tales, however to look at all of this play out as shortly and effectively because it does is nothing in need of good. And whereas it’s onerous to think about the Anderson of the Rushmore days trying something practically as complicated as this, The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar nonetheless looks as if a throwback to a extra exact, extra restricted story that we haven’t seen from him in fairly a while. There’s no time to fill The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar with curious aspect characters or entertaining asides, and that brevity appears like an fascinating experiment for Anderson to make at this level in his profession, because the movies have grown extra expansive and Byzantine.
Henry Sugar additionally provides us much more actors who’re nice suits with Anderson’s particular model. In fact, Fiennes works nicely with Anderson, as we’ve seen in Grand Budapest Resort, and he’s a wonderful selection for Dahl, whose completely curated sitting nook feels immediately out of an image e-book. Cumberbatch is having a ball as Henry Sugar, and his efficiency works fantastically with Anderson’s tone. It’s additionally virtually onerous to consider that Patel and Richard Ayoade have by no means labored with Anderson earlier than, however hopefully, as soon as this mission is finished, this received’t be the final time. All of those actors nail the comedic timing essential to make this brief work, and once more, this finally ends up virtually like a theatre troupe working their approach by means of what appears like an impeccably crafted play extra so than something Anderson has completed so far.
The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar appears like a mission Anderson wanted, a option to discover smaller storytelling in a fashion that also permits him room to experiment, have enjoyable, and make the most of his very particular voice and skills. Anderson takes what might’ve been a trifle and turns it right into a treasure, as even on this extra compact story, he nonetheless brings an inherent grandeur to all the things he touches at this level in his profession. We already knew Anderson and Dahl have been an ideal match, however The Fantastic Story of Henry Sugar reveals us that this would possibly simply be what Anderson wants proper now as a filmmaker.