The Won­der­ful Sto­ry of Hen­ry Sug­ar – first-look review

Back in June, while pro­mot­ing Aster­oid City, Wes Ander­son caused quite the stir when he was asked about his new Roald Dahl adap­ta­tion with Net­flix. After first point­ing out that Net­flix was the only place he could do the film since they acquired the rights to Dahl’s back cat­a­logue in 2021 for $370 mil­lion, he then remarked that the stream­ing plat­form was ​“the per­fect place to do it, because it’s not real­ly a movie”. Undoubt­ed­ly Ander­son meant noth­ing by the com­ment oth­er than he prefers his films to be watched in the cin­e­ma rather than on a lap­top or phone (at least on first run) but the com­ment was still deeply amus­ing for fans.

Per­haps in response, his sec­ond Dahl adap­ta­tion – from the short The Won­der­ful Sto­ry of Hen­ry Sug­ar – will receive a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal release before it hits stream­ing, and played Out of Com­pe­ti­tion at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val. At a dinky 37 min­utes, it’s his sec­ond short­est film after Hotel Cheva­lier, which was shot as a com­pan­ion piece to The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. It’s also utter­ly charm­ing, though we’ve come to expect as much from Anderson’s metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed tech­ni­colour worlds.

Work­ing with a clutch of Wes first-timers as well as return­ing muse Ralph Fiennes (who here serves as Roald Dahl, nar­rat­ing the film) Ander­son tells the rather suc­cinct sto­ry of a fab­u­lous­ly wealthy man (played by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch) who cares for lit­tle beyond the accu­mu­la­tion of fur­ther wealth. One evening while snoop­ing in the library of a friend’s home he dis­cov­ers a book by Dr. ZZ Chat­ter­jee (Dev Patel) that details his encounter with one Imdad Khan (Ben Kings­ley): The Man Who Could See With­out Using His Eyes.

This sto­ry-with­in-a-sto­ry is pre­sent­ed like a play, with intri­cate back­drops that illus­trate Khan’s sto­ry of train­ing with a mys­te­ri­ous Yogi (Richard Ayoade, who also appears as a doc­tor) in the depths of the Indi­an jun­gle. In this sense, the film is rem­i­nis­cent of Aster­oid City, but also brings to mind the home-staged plays of Mar­got Tenen­baum. The splen­dour of the set design reflects Dahl’s extra­or­di­nary imag­i­na­tion, but also indi­cates that Ander­son puts as much care and atten­tion to detail into a short film as a long one.

It’s not a sur­prise that Patel, Ayoade and Kings­ley fit seam­less­ly into an Ander­son pic­ture (per­haps they’ll return for a longer project in future, though Ander­son has indi­cat­ed that they may pop up in the oth­er Dahl shorts he is mak­ing for Net­flix) and their direct-to-audi­ence deliv­ery – includ­ing stage direc­tions – injects an ele­ment of dead­pan humour. Fiennes makes per­haps a too flat­ter­ing Dahl, with the first scene shot as a doc­u­men­tary at the writer’s Gip­sy Cot­tage as he explains his process (Ander­son pre­vi­ous­ly stayed at the hut when he was work­ing on Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox, so it’s no sur­prise he recre­ates the sur­round­ings lov­ing­ly) before begin­ning to tell the sto­ry direct-to-cam­era. There’s even a lit­tle Jarvis Cock­er cameo, which is always nice.

Some crit­ics con­sid­ered the Won­der­ful Sto­ry of Hen­ry Sug­ar to be Dahl’s humourous attempt to hit back at his detrac­tors, who accused him of being a mean writer. Cer­tain­ly it’s a rather sac­cha­rine nar­ra­tive about a man whose miser­li­ness is for­ev­er changed by a moment of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty (and the endur­ing exoti­cism of India is an issue with­in the source mate­r­i­al that doesn’t exact­ly get cor­rect­ed here) that doesn’t offer the same food for thought as Anderson’s fea­tures. It might even serve as a bit of a joke about the con­stant accu­sa­tions his fil­mog­ra­phy faces, of his films being all style over sub­stance. But for devo­tees, it’s a delight­ful lit­tle morsel, lov­ing­ly brought to life as only Ander­son knows how, and illus­trates his cre­ativ­i­ty when it comes to adaptation.