A Very Eclectic Dahl Tale

I am not an expert on Roald Dahl. Hell, I had to look up how to even spell his name. My best and, really, only exposure to the author are the various adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in large part because the 1971 film adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was played pretty regularly in the schools I attended whenever a teacher didn’t actually want to teach that day. I did read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator once. It was fine. I felt little need to explore anything else the author wrote.

That’s not an indictment of the author, more just explaining my weird tastes as a reader and how, if you put a bunch of film adaptations in front of me I wouldn’t even be able to tell you which ones were based on Dahl books and which weren’t. “Does it have Willy Wonka in it?” would be the only question I’d know to ask, which is silly since the author wrote nineteen books and dozens upon dozens of short stories, only two of which featured the deranged chocolatier. But one of his books got really famous from all the film adaptations we’ve seen of it, and the rest… well, not as much.

Still, when the name Roald Dahl comes up I do at least get a little curious. The British author had a very eclectic storytelling style, coming up with subjects that were often weird and wild. When you see something with his name applied to you there’s this bit of intrigue. What is this going to be about? Will it be silly and strange? In a way that can be applied to many of his works (even if, as both a British man and, reportedly, a perpetual grump, he likely would have been annoyed at any of his stories being called “silly”). And when one of them not only shows up in my feed on NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it)., but also clocks in at just under 40 minutes, well that’s an easy thing to pick up for a late night watch.

Acting as the first in a series of adaptations of Dahl’s short story work, and produced by writer/director Wes Anderson, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a very odd little short. It starts off with an author in a cabin discussing a story he was commissioned to write, except it then transitions, from author to subject, in a single scene, with the subject of the story, the titular Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) taking over narration duties. That is right up to the point where he finds a book written by Dr. Chatterjee (Dev Patel) about a patient that came into the hospital at Calcutta, and the doctor takes over narration just long enough to discuss the patient, who then takes over narration to discuss his own story. And on down the rabbit hole we go.

To be honest, this kind of narrative sleight-of-hand could feel tiresome in the wrong hands. Each person taking over narration from the one before it, down to the next person, when we finally get to the real first story being told, is already a lot. But the trick of this is that so much of this is a narrative diversion from the actual story. Whose story is this? Henry Sugar’s? So why do we spend so long with the circus performer, Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley) who learned from a yogi how to see without using his eyes? Because that story ties directly into the one, above, and the one above that, all to get to a point where we’re finally learning about Henry Sugar once more.

But then, amusingly, you have to remember that this isn’t really the story about Henry Sugar, even if it is. This is actually the story the narrator is telling us all about the book he was going to write about Henry Sugar, so, in effect, this is actually a story about Roald Dahl telling us a fictionalized version of how he came up with the events of this short story that you wrote about in 1977. Is that a lot? It feels like a lot when I describe it after the fact.

Honestly, I loved the way this short weaved and threaded itself through its various bits of narrative loops and whorls. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a lot, with so much story to tell, frequently breathlessly and directly to the camera, removing all pretense of this being somehow a normal, natural telling of the story. There is artifice to the story, only accented by the way that Wes Anderson directed the movie. You can tell, clear off, that this is a staged production, and that all the layers of artifice are purposeful. That’s how Wes Anderson does things, and with this short he could really indulge and, in a way, make the most Wes Anderson production I think I’ve ever seen before.

And yet, for all its narrative complexity the production itself is also really simple. The film only features seven total actors – Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, David Gant, and Jarvis Cocker – and all of them play multiple roles in each other’s stories. All of the sets are very obviously sets, theatrical and artificial, with all the stageiness of it presented front and center. You’ve never supposed to get lost in the realism of the piece because the film makes it quite obvious how fake everything is… and yet, that actually adds to it because you can get lost in the artificiality and appreciate the production for what it is.

Frankly, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a masterwork of min-maxing a film. Wed Anderson indulges and over-indulges and yet, at the same time, he also refines the story down to such a simple, pure core that he finds a truth within that’s far simpler than any “normal” production could find. It very much feels like an Anderson film, but in creating this work it also neatly taps into Dahl’s peculiarities as an author and brings his voice properly to the screen. It’s fantastic.

After watching the film on its own, Netflix then helpfully let me know that it was also part of a longer, anthology film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More, and I honestly wish that the streaming service had let me know that immediately. I felt silly getting this review together and then seeing, “oh, there was more I didn’t watch.” I feel compelled now to go back and watch the “And Three More” that come with. Still, I’m not certain if I would have so easily picked up this film if it wasn’t short and sitting there, waiting for me. It was a perfectly digestible chunk of film I could pop on before going to bed, and it was so engrossing that I want more. Netflix may have done me a service, even if I was grumpy about it, because now I feel like the other three shorts are worth watching whereas there’s a chance if I’d seen the whole, theatrical length collection, I might have added it to my list and then never watched it.

All of this is to say that if you want a solid, short, delightful bit of theatrical filmmaking, at the very least watch The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. If, however, you have the time to watch it all, absolutely go for the whole, feature length set. I know I’m going to, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed by what comes next.