Love him or hate him, Wes Anderson has managed to maintain his own auteurist vision his entire career. Never once has left his quirky, absurdist yet deeply personal and introspective post to attempt to direct a Marvel movie or big studio action film. No. Wes knows what Wes does best, and while that can lead to a sense of overindulgence at times, the integrity of his work and uniqueness of being able to tell the stories he wants to tell in the ways he wants to tell them is unmatched in filmmaking, particularly for this long and this often into a career. Despite his style being always imitated but never duplicated (the AI recreations are hilarious, but they only capture the style of his work and not the actual substance buried beneath the dollhouse menagerie) he is not without his own boundaries he wants to push.
Sure, you always know what you’re going to SEE In a Wes Anderson film, but you aren’t always sure what you’re going to GET when he puts those elements together.
Thus is the case with Netflix’s Wes Anderson Short Film Anthology, a collection of works adapted from framed Roald Dahl short stories. These are lesser known works from Dahl, and a far cry from things like “Matilda” and “James and the Giant Peach.” For the sake of discussing the adapted works at hand, I’m going to set aside discourse on any controversy surrounding Dahl (a quick Google search will take you down the necessary rabbit hole) and focus solely on the short stories written and now adapted into shorts by Anderson.
The first thing that really stands out about both of these two fantastical storytellers combining their works together is that both are astoundingly prolific. Dahl’s takes Anderson adapts here are pretty surprising, not just for creatively they’re brought to screen but by how big of a departure they are from many of his more famous works. Anderson too, has now released 6 projects (2 features 4 shorts) in 3 years, with his latest set to begin filming before the dust can even settle on 5 of those projects being released this year.
Anderson has always been fascinated with artists and the artistry, always choosing to center his stories around families with creatives or visionaries somewhere at their core. So at first, the idea of him wanting to take a stab at Dahl’s lesser known work seems out of his wheelhouse, when you consider how learned and literarily knowledgeable Wes has proven himself to be, it’s actually not that surprising at all. Of COURSE Wes knows all about short stories written by a famous author no one has ever really heard of. Yes, I understand that there are true Dahl fans out there that have been screaming about “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” for decades. When I say no one, I mean the general public and casuals, which I would venture to say captures the vast majority of people. Anderson (like Dahl’s short stories and the few diehards) in an outlier despite his critical acclaim, and one doesn’t have to look too far into the “Henry Sugar” film to see what makes these two writers and creators a match made in heaven.
Yes, I stand by my statement: Short Wes Anderson is the best Wes Anderson. Something magical happens in these short bursts of vibrant colors, stagey production, center framing, dollhouse aesthetic, monologue heavy delivery and deadpan characters with quirks that don’t quite feel real but somehow feel relatable all translate well over a taut 17 minute runtime. It’s like Wes was made for this, and Dahl’s work provides the perfect blueprint. The stories themselves are bizarre and absurd, and seem to be begging for someone like Wes to interpret them onto the screen using all of his tools and performers that seem to understand these things best. On that front, the 4 Netflix Shorts add two newcomers to the Anderson cast list in the form of Dev Patel and Benedict Cumberbatch. Both appear in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” (the longest of all the shorts at around 40 minutes) and “Poison” (the last of the 4 released) and seem to fully understand the assignment right away.
Both are given huge swaths of dialogue in each short to chew through, and because this is Anderson working on a much smaller (but still ever gorgeous) scale, both Patel and Cumberbatch are asked to shoulder far more than normal in the collection of actors Wes calls upon for such tasks. Patel in particular, who has so rarely been able to truly showcase his abilities in a number of his smaller projects shines bright in the Anderson short world, with him quite literally carrying a good 80% of the dialogue in “Poison” by himself. He truly fits right in, so well in fact you can’t believe Wes hasn’t used him in everything all along. Cumberbatch too, who is able to kind of stretch his legs a bit and let loose with words while still bringing his gravitas to the role. I am always glad when I see actors later defined by their blockbuster roles (“Doctor Strange” and “Star Trek” to name a few) and dig deep into passion projects that demonstrate just how good and versatile they are. Anderson too, is a director who seems to know how to get the most and best out of his performers. He walks that tight rope of demanding a precise, near perfect performance for his own visions while never stifling them so much that they feel they can’t explore the characters themselves.
Rupert Friend is another addition to the Anderson family, who is charged with near soloing “The Swan.” It is pretty much 17 minutes of Friend performing the entire short story from start to finish, even charged with injecting different voices for multiple characters that switch back and forth at the drop of hat. Friend eats it up gloriously, once again demonstrating that he is a very capable actor when given the right material and a platform with which to demonstrate his skills. Those are the standouts, and they are joined by other familiar faces such as Sir Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes appears briefly in almost all of the shorts, and is the star of “Ratcatcher.” This is perhaps the weakest of the for and the most absurd. Not in the Anderson way, either. It’s a rather chilling tale that borders on the macabre, and seems to be the most soulless of the bunch. Fiennes is terrific and weird in the best of ways, but whatever meaning is supposedly buried beneath the surface in “Ratcatcher” doesn’t quite translate as well as the others.
But one mediocre short out of 4 isn’t a bad track record, and this surprise Netflix Short Anthology brings out the best in Wes Anderson and elevates the lesser know works of Dahl. Make no mistake, this is full blown Wes material, and isn’t out to create any new fans. It is everything “The French Dispatch” wished it was, and at a perfect total of 90 minutes across all 4 stories, it’s not a bad way to get more Wes Anderson in your life.
You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
(the rating is an aggregated total of all 4 shorts and does not represent any individual ratings as I believe they should be taken as a whole anthology piece rather than be isolated from their counterparts.)
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” “The Swan,” “The Ratcatcher,” and “Poison” are currently streaming on Netflix. You can watch the trailer for “Henry Sugar” below.
