Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’ on Netflix, A New Wes Anderson Short, Adapting a Roald Dahl Tale

2023 is shaping up to be Wes Anderson’s most productive year yet: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the first of four short films the beloved idiosyncratist – is that a word? It should be – made for Netflix, all based on stories by Roald Dahl, and debuting on consecutive days. The other three? In order of their release, The Swan, The Rat Catcher and Poison, and all four films feature Ralph Fiennes as Dahl himself, with Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade and Benedict Cumberbatch cast in various roles. And all those films arrive on the heels of perhaps his most ambitious narrative yet, Asteroid City, which debuted earlier in the year, and shares a nesting-doll structure with Henry Sugar, the layers of which we’ll peel back and examine a bit right now.

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s easy to imagine that the hut in which Roald Dahl (Fiennes) works was designed by Wes Anderson, even though he wasn’t around to do it. So it makes sense that Anderson does imagine it as he does here, as a quaint little stone building where Dahl sat in a cushioned chair with a lapboard, surrounded by various meticulously arranged comfort items ranging from chocolates and pencils to various gewgaws and knickknacks. Dahl speaks directly to us as his environment shifts around him like a theatre production, and he tells the story of Henry Sugar (Cumberbatch), here described as a rich man who was afflicted with the rich person’s disease, which is an obsession with attaining more money than the very much money he already has, because because more than he needs still will never ever be enough. He also liked to gamble.

One day Henry Sugar found himself in a room full of books, one of which stuck out among the carefully curated collection of leatherback tomes. He opens it and now takes on the role of narrator as he reads the story of Imdad Khan (Kingsley), a man who could see without using his eyes. This, of course, was an extraordinary skill. We take the perspective of two curious and fascinated doctors (Patel and Ayoade) as Khan tells a story within the story within the story within the story about how he learned intense meditation and visualization exercises from a yogi, and practiced and practiced and practiced for years and years until he could not only thoroughly cover his face and easily navigate cluttered hallways and stairwells, but also could use this skill to determine the identity of a playing card simply by looking at the back of it. The latter bit piqued Henry Sugar’s interest, because if there’s a way to acquire ever more money than ever before, it’s by learning to see without his eyes and then going to casinos and cheating at blackjack. So that’s what he does, but one soon gets the sense that Henry Sugar might’ve found a way to see inside himself, too.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Need I remind you that Anderson’s other Dahl adaptation, Fantastic Mr. Fox, might be his best film? (It is at the very least my favorite among his filmography.)

Performance Worth Watching: You’re asking me to choose between Fiennes and Kingsley. Please don’t. Masters, both of them, especially with this type of exquisitely modulated material. 

Memorable Dialogue: A typically deadpan-Anderson take on death: “He went to sleep and never woke up. These things happen,” Dahl says.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I haven’t done adequate service to Anderson’s work, which is as meticulously curio as ever from a visual standpoint. He uses a variety of clever visual tricks – practical effects and/or animation, and/or animation that resembles practical effects; not knowing exactly how he did it is part of the joy of watching it – to change environments around his characters as they speak. Lighting and backgrounds and foregrounds shift and morph like a shrewdly designed stage play, but you’ll never criticize the film as being “stagey,” since the narrative sprawls over many years and a couple of countries and exhibits an ambition to enliven Dahl’s tale for the visual medium in a manner that enhances his playful, thoughtful storytelling. There’s even a moment when Imdad tells a story and the visual cue for a flashback finds Cumberbatch-as-Henry-Sugar helping him replace his eyebrows and hairpiece for those of a less aged man. And you can’t help but laugh.

Which is to say Anderson enhances Dahl’s parable in endearing and meaningful ways. His characters read Dahl’s prose directly at us in typically Andersonesque stony, ratatat fashion, double quotation marks surrounding single quotation marks surrounding double quotation marks, peering at the blurry barriers between fact and fiction (“Had this been a made-up story instead of a true one,” Henry Sugar says at one point without a single wink or nudge, inspiring our bemusement) until he arrives at the true heart of Henry Sugar, which is, of course, ultimately, rather sweet, and inspiring in the simple life lesson it holds, about selflessness and generosity. Anderson does a lot more in Henry Sugar’s 37 minutes than many filmmakers do in 137, and makes sure the film is only as long as it needs to be, not that anyone’s counting. It moves so quickly you may just find yourself watching the end credits and then immediately starting the film over again.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wes Anderson keeps getting more and more Wes Andersony, love it or hate it. And may the deities help you if you hate it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.