Wes Anderson's Roald Dahl Cycle

My love of Wes Anderson is no secret. After seeing my first (Moonrise Kingdom), it took just over a month for me to watch the other nine. And back in June, I reviewed Asteroid City right here, a movie I quite enjoyed. So imagine my delight when I learned he was to release four short films on four successive days on Netflix, each one an adaptation of a Roald Dahl short story! They are The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison.

He’s adapted Dahl once before, of course, with 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Something about Dahl feels incredibly well suited to Anderson’s aesthetic. Maybe it’s the bright landscapes somewhat undercut by their quietly but starkly surreal happenings. Maybe it’s the prim and proper world he presents. Maybe it’s the way he tends to be hyperspecific in his descriptions of people and settings and actions. Maybe it’s because I can envision Anderson himself at home in a tall backed armchair wearing a smoking jacket and puffing on a pipe while reading a book by the fire.

Now, I don’t normally review short films here, nor do I intend to make a habit of it. But I got the sense due to their release schedule and posters that there would be some relation between these shorts. While the stories have nothing to do with each other, they all feature some combination of the same six actors: Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Richard Ayeode, Ben Kingsly, and Rupert Friend. Fiennes plays the only recurring character (Roald Dahl himself), and everyone plays multiple roles, sometimes in the same short. You’ll note that none of them are frequent Anderson collaborators (although Fiennes and Friend have worked with him before), which is interesting. In addition, each short is relayed using the same conceit and framing device, giving them the feel of being bound together in their own right.

Let’s start there: the narrative style. All are relayed to us as an audiobook recited by the characters themselves. They speak directly to camera most of the time, no matter where the camera is: over their shoulder, off to the side of the action, or even overhead. They’re narrating what’s happening or about to happen, sometimes tell us what a character is about to say just before they say it, and frequently inform us of their inner thoughts. They are fully aware that they’re in a story, and behaving accordingly.

Which of course they do, because each is staged like a play, although with the ability for us to travel with the camera, and to achieve certain effects which would be impossible (or nearly so) without the benefit of editing. Henry Sugar makes use of this the most. It includes a number of very long takes, changing the location by moving walls and by period appropriate stagehands and extras replacing the furniture and even changing the actor’s clothing, which turns out to be tearaway. While the shots are largely locked down, the contents of the frame oscillates between an actor telling us a story while the events play out around them, and the flurry of activity as the location and props and costumes change. All is made to deliberately tell us this is some theatrical production of the work, much like the play which frames the fictional stage play Asteroid City. For example, throughout The Swan, stagehands swap out props and costumes and such through doors in the wheat field. The characters even walk through these doors to change location. Or in Poison, where at a number of moments we’re made aware of how the rooms aren’t actually room by viewing their dividers edge on, with the main character walking in front of them. Or even The Rat Catcher, which engages in this fourth wall break less (although still plenty), but makes sure to hold up various props direct to camera for the audience to see.

To add to this feeling of a play, the sound design embodies a sense of location. If a character is behind something, their voice will be muffled. The exact way it sounds depends on the material of the divider and the structure it’s a part of. They make use of the ubiquity of stereo sound: as characters move to the edge of the screen, or even keep talking as they drift off of it, the sound of their voice completely drops from the opposite channel, so you’d swear they’re really to the side of your screen. It’s rare that a director is willing to pull a trick like that in the home mix so many times and so distinctly. But he wants you to feel like you’re at a live performance of these stories, and moving sound is part of that.

Well, that’s not quite true. Modern mics mean a stage actor’s voice can come from wherever. So what’s Anderson doing? Given that these are seen as children’s stories, albeit dark ones, I think they’re aiming for the vibe of a school play, where the kids likely don’t have mics. This is bolstered a bit by the number of “mistakes” made and missed cues and times one actor must visibly or verbally beckon to another, and just general awkwardness. Obviously, the production value doesn’t support that, but everything else does.

Even accounting for the view of Anderson as his own style, when he leans this hard into the faux live performance aspect, it invites the question of why? The most obvious answer is that he’s become obsessed with the artifice we accept in performance art, and the way it can be used to play with the sense of reality. He loves to nest his narratives, to build apparent hierarchies where there are none, just the movie and the viewer. While the production design is as alive and vibrant and elaborate as ever in each story, he’s attacking your ability to willingly suspend your disbelief, trying to see how far he can push it before it breaks his ability to tell a story. And Dahl’s stories lend themselves superbly well to such an approach. Some, like Henry Sugar, were written by Dahl as a story within a story within a story (and some additional story spurs), which when combined with the outer layer of Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) the narrator, take the nesting to absurd levels. Most are written in the first person, making it seem only natural that the characters are self-aware, as we’re experiencing their first-hand account after the fact. Which itself calls the very nature of fiction into question, for how could they be telling us their story word-for-word while it’s happening? So Anderson stages it as if they’re literally doing exactly that.

The next question is why these particular stories? That I don’t know. Netflix owns the rights to all Dahl’s stories, so he presumably had his pick. They don’t seem particularly thematically related. Their structures and messages and even audiences seem different. They’re not (as best as I can tell) regarded as his best nor his worst, nor did they come from notable collections, or notable points in his career. I’m sure there’s some reason each was chosen, I just don’t know it.

What about the reuse of actors, both across but also within the movie? Well, I can only speculate about that, but I imagine it’s mostly logistical. Using the same actors makes it much easier to shoot back-to-back (which I suspect he did here), and eases scheduling, especially as he was in post-production for Asteroid City at the time. For all the actual characters to be known quantities is rare, and even more so for a cycle of shorts: short films are usually the domain of small-time actors, and maybe one or two big names. It does have the effect of driving home this as a cycle, as opposed to unrelated shorts. But I’d guess that was a secondary benefit.

All the performances are wonderful. To be fair, it’s mostly varying degrees of how well can you slot into this aesthetic, although there are a few standouts (see below). It’s nice to see him working with some more actors of color, as he’s earned an unfortunate (but very fair) reputation of making predominantly white films.

I highly recommend all of them. And their runtimes added together is less than 90 minutes, so watching all four in a row (which I’d suggest) remains a breeze.

Finally, since I am talking about four separate shorts, now’s a good time to briefly mention my thoughts on each. Spoiler-free, as always.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

The longest of them, clocking in just under the wire to be considered for Best Live Action Short Film (for which I wholly expect it will be nominated). Those long takes mentioned above really are magical, as you travel far and wide, even into and out of narrative nesting, without the use of cuts. I also adored the commitment to staging: the way they show the yogi levitating is super neat, and I’m sure the way they’d do it on Broadway, but way more effective here since Anderson can control the exact angle at which you’re seeing the screen. Additionally, they do some neat stagey things to play with the passage of time, including enveloping Ben Kingsley’s head in a hinged full head bandage to simulate doctors tightly wrapping it right in front of our eyes without camera tricks. Awesome. And the story of Henry Sugar is quite engaging, in part because I’m a sucker for multi-layered storytelling.

Also, in a strange twist, there’s a scene late in the film which is possibly the first time Anderson’s used a non-symmetrical shot in over a decade. Specifically, it’s a balcony which isn’t on any of his normal planes or lines. Its not a problem or anything, it just felt so odd for him. You’ll know it when you see it.

The Swan

This one is my least favorite, but it’s still quite good. It was the most obviously theatrical, which I quite enjoyed. The aforementioned doors were its biggest trick, but it also featured some stop motion, and the one other named actor in Asa Jennings as young (but silent) Peter Watson. Well, most of the time. He did at a couple points change costumes to assume the persona of another character in order to act out something for the camera without introducing another actor. It also favors changing scenery by characters walking off-screen (although that’s often through a door in a what field). It’s also the smallest cast: the whole thing is basically Rupert Friend talking to you. The issue is just that this is the type of Dahl story I like the least. But in every artistic way, it’s great.

Oh, and it contains probably the funniest single joke (to me) across the four. It’s one of the times a gun is fired. You’ll know it when you see it…er, hear it.

The Rat Catcher

Now here we go! For my money, this is the best. Given that, it should be no surprise that it’s probably the weirdest and most unsettling of the four. They interact with a live rat a few times in the short, and there are four different ways we “see” it. First is imaginary: they just mime interacting with it. Second is with a taxidermied rat. Third is with stop motion. And fourth is when Rupert Friend briefly uses a rat teeth prosthetic. Quite creative, and with a natural escalation. This is also the only one to take place in a single location, although some of the shots and sights still make for a dynamic background. It’s quite funny, Ralph Fiennes is perfection as the titular Rat Catcher, and its climax is a super effective and intense shot sequence which I adored.

Poison

The most tense of the four. It features many unsettling shots of Cumberbatch’s face, appearing white as a sheet and flat and round as a pancake, as he attempts to stay more still than any human being ever has. And there’’s a shot at the end from a low angel that is super imposing and fascinating. The tale itself is presented in that twee, Anderson way, which transforms the premise of many a horror film into a light yet suspenseful comedy. Its biggest trick is not only a return to Henry Sugar’s focus on lifting walls, but to then work outside of them, emphasizing its nature as a story which the narrator (in this case, a man named Woods, played by Dev Patel) is recalling. Great tale.