Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Richard Ayaode, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend
Duration: 39 minutes
Director: Wes Anderson
Available on: Netflix
Wes Anderson gives artifice a good reputation. By his barefaced, shameless, relentless insistence upon it, until it produces the effect of being stuffed, of having seen too much and with the rattling pace of deadpan dialogues, having heard too much. With his latest short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, adapted from Roald Dahl’s short story — one of four, including The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison — he pulls this lever of speed, of artifice, so hard, he breaks it.
It begins, not with the story itself, but with Roald Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) taking us through his daily regimen, his space, and then, to his narrating the story of Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch). This is because, as Anderson notes in interviews, he was in love with the voice of Dahl’s narration, that detached yet notorious dryness, and wanted to somehow lasso that into the film. The narration, which was at first done by Dahl, switches to Sugar, and then, switches again. And again. Till subjectivity, the very question of whose story this is about, sounds silly.