Henry Sugar
In September, Wes Anderson released four new short films on Netflix.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (39 min)
The Swan (17 min)
The Rat Catcher (17 min)
Poison (17 min)
Over the course of the month a new film was posted each week, starting with Henry Sugar.
This film is Anderson's take on a 1977 short story of the same name by Roald Dahl.
It is Anderson’s second film adaptation of a Dahl work, following Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009.
It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character alongside Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade.
The story describes a rich man learning about a clairvoyant yogi who could see without using his eyes, then setting out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.
Henry Sugar captivated Anderson as a child, and he had been thinking about adapting it for a long time but there was a blocker: How to bring such narrator-dependent works for the screen through actors and dialogue?
The answer turned out to be reciting Dahl’s words directly while acting them in set pieces, like putting a camera in front of a stage play.
This approach provides a new take on Anderson’s signature aesthetic.
Each film stars a small rotating cast of actors taking on multiple roles.
“I liked the idea, right off the bat, of having a little company play the whole film,” Anderson said.
The simplified format not only gave Anderson the opportunity to adapt more of Dahl's works, but also to collaborate with new actors.
There's a nice write-up on Netflix's blog called Tudum (good name, echoing Netflix’s sound logo), plus some background on Roald Dahl, here:
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/wes-anderson-netflix-short-films
