Possibly filled with more artifice than even his stop-motion efforts Isle of Dogs and Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar takes place entirely on stages and sets that never pretend to be anything but stages and sets. It’s like being on Steve Zissou’s boat—the life-size model—and never actually going out to sea. Detractors of Anderson’s doll-house aesthetic will probably feel claustrophobic, but I’m too far gone of a fan to have found it anything but delightful. Like Mr. Fox, Henry Sugar is an adaptation of a Roald Dahl short story, yet that succinct source material—and the 39-minute running time—hardly means things are simplistic. Both versions begin with a narrator (here Ralph Fiennes, playing Dahl) who introduces us to the smug, narcissistic trust-fund baby of the title (Benedict Cumberbatch), who comes across a journal written by a doctor (Dev Patel), who relays the story of meeting a performer in a traveling carnival who can see without using his eyes (Ben Kingsley). When Henry Sugar sets out to learn the man’s secret in hopes of using the talent to rip off gambling houses, the experience changes him in unexpected ways. Dahl’s droll, matter-of-fact writing voice is a perfect match for the detached tone Anderson generally sets, which makes for a seamless transition from page to screen. Still, Anderson (as is his wont) complicates things in fascinating ways. As Henry Sugar, Cumberbatch narrates his actions in the third person even as he performs them in the first. As Dr. Chatterjee, Patel narrates in the first person while also performing the actions. (He frequently prefaces his lines within the narrative by looking into the camera and saying, “I said. . .”). Then Kingsley’s Imdad Khan shares his part of the tale while looking directly into the camera. The result of all this? It’s fun, of course, but also a wittily verbose master class on the way voice can be employed in fiction. The actors are all wonderful in making this feel charming, rather than academic (most also play multiple parts, in another stage touch). But the true stars of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar are the production design (Adam Stockhausen), set decoration (Cathy Featherstone and Anna Pinnock), and art direction (Kevin Timon Hill, Claire Peerless, and Richard Hardy). There are colorful sliding panels to evoke a trek through the jungle; rear-projection for a driving scene; and—my favorite touch—a cube painted to blend in with the wall behind it to make a yogi (and later Henry) look as if they’re levitating off the ground. With that sort of imagination and skill, who needs reality? (Part of a collection of Anderson shorts adapted from Dahl, alongside The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison.)
(11/2/2023)
