Of the four Roald Dahl stories that Wes Anderson adapted into short films in 2023, Poison—the seemingly straightforward tale of a British officer in India (Benedict Cumberbatch) who believes a snake has slithered into his bed—features the most significant changes from the original text. And the reason for that appears to be political. While Dahl’s story hints at the way trauma from military service means living in a constant state of tension, Anderson visually emphasizes the point. (Particularly when Dev Patel’s narrator comments on how the smell of chloroform reminds him of surgery and we get a stark shot of Patel under surgical lights, highlighting a facial scar we may not have noticed before.) Similarly, when the officer and the Indian doctor who arrives to help (Ben Kingsley) get into an argument, Dahl pointedly exposes the officer’s racism by having him shout racial slurs. Anderson continues that more pointedly in his film’s final moments, altering Dahl’s written exchange between the narrator and the doctor in a way that refuses to let the officer off the hook in any way. It all makes Poison one of Anderson’s most potently political films (in line with Isle of Dogs and The Grand Budapest Hotel), if one that’s far more didactic than anything else he’s done. (The collection of Anderson shorts adapted from Dahl also includes The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, and The Rat Catcher.)
(11/2/2023)
