Susan Granger’s review of Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and three additional Raoul Dahl short stories (Netflix)
In the past few weeks, Netflix has quietly launched Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and three additional Raoul Dahl short stories.
Each is a fanciful fable drawn from the extensive ‘idea’ files that eccentric, cardigan-clad, curmudgeonly storyteller Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) kept in Gipsy House, his isolated ‘writing hut’ adjacent to his home in Buckinghamshire, England – where he wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda.”
Set in the 1930s, “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” introduces a self-absorbed, scheming gambler (Benedict Cumberbatch) who learns a method of meditation that gives him X-ray vision to see through playing cards, launching him on a casino-hopping career that causes him to question his very existence. It’s 40 minutes long.
Next there’s “The Swan” recalling a macabre bullying incident that becomes lethal; then “The Rat Catcher” about a bizarrely feral exterminator; and finally “Poison,” set in India, where an inscrutable British officer believes that a highly poisonous krait snake is sleeping on his stomach – each running 17 minutes.
This whimsical cinematic anthology is the creation of Wes Anderson, who became intrigued by the emotional truths in Raoul Dahl’s work after adapting his novel into the Oscar-nominated, stop-motion animated “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009).
Stumped on how to translate Dahl’s jottings to the screen, Anderson decided to have the four principal actors (Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade), playing various characters, narrate the author’s adroit descriptions and their actions directly into the camera at a rapid pace with deadpan directness.
Anderson’s inventive, precisely calibrated contrivance works, along with analog & antiquarian visual touches supplied by fastidious production designer Adam Stockhausen, mischievous cinematographer Robert Yeoman and precise composer Alexander Desplat,.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and other tales score an enchanting, enigmatic 8, streaming – one after another – on Netflix.
