Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar review: Wes Anderson’s oddest film yet

This review of Wes Anderson’s Henry Sugar and His Wonderful Story comes from the film’s premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. This film is due for release in September.

Wes Anderson has released an enchanting, melancholy movie earlier this year. Asteroid City. It bore his signature children’s pop-up book style, but in order to chip away at the hardened layers of grief, he presented his usual flourishes with uncanny restraint. It is his second release in 2023. Henry Sugar and His Wonderful Story, rushes in the opposite direction, replacing mournful silences with the nonstop rattle of narration while building exuberant layers of eye-popping façade.

This is a 40-minute version of a story that runs 70 pages. Henry Sugar is as much Anderson’s version of the tale as it is an ode to the author, Roald Dahl. (Anderson previously adapted one of Dahl’s other children’s books, 1970’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.) In fact, Dahl’s short — part of the short-story collection Henry Sugar’s Wonderful Story: Six More Stories — is so uniquely suited to Anderson’s sensibilities, with its multi-layered narrative and imaginative whimsy, that this project is the closest page-to-screen translation in cinema.

That may sound like hyperbole, but the way Anderson uses Dahl’s text verges on experimental. It isn’t the basis for his script, it’s the script itself, with characters enacting the plot while narrating the prose word-for-word. They often follow their own lines of dialogue with “I said” and similar, turning briefly to the camera, as if they’re all collectively reading the story to the audience.

It’s possible that this idea is misguided. However, it does create a sense of urgency. Anderson’s cast had to memorize his entire script and recite it continuously in short, uninterrupted bursts. As they move between painted flats or sets that change every time the setting changes, Anderson has them sauntering through the set. The film would be a theatrical production if it weren’t for some specific and pointed cuts to highlight poignant moments.

Although the titular character is the wealthy and successful gambler Henry Sugar, (Benedict Cumberbatch), this title has been a little misleading as Henry appears in only the last third of the movie. The actual subject is the “wonderful story,” told by a narrator (Ralph Fiennes) who introduces Sugar just as he discovers a doctor’s journal that records the recollections of an Indian man with the mystic ability to see without his eyes. Sugar is immediately thinking about the ways that his ability to see without eyes could be used in card games. Right from the outset, this structure falls perfectly in line with Anderson’s approach to several of his recent films (Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch” Asteroid City), in which a story’s telling is as vital as the story itself.

Image: Netflix

Fiennes starts the story with a reclusive author dressed in earthy colors, sitting comfortably in an untidy cottage covered in personal possessions. That feels like any other tableau that could have sprung forth from Anderson’s mind — with the help of production designer Adam Stockhausen and cinematographer Robert Yeoman, two of his key collaborators — but it’s based entirely on real pictures of Roald Dahl, down to the tiniest detail.

You can also find out more about Grand Budapest, French DispatchThe following are some examples of how to get started: Asteroid CityAnderson’s movies were framed as interviews, symposiums about newspaper articles or teleplays about stage plays, jumping from one medium to another in order to hide his most emotional moments. Henry Sugar: The Amazing StoryIt is a book that is about books. He adapts even the act of authorship. It reveals one of the weakest parts of his work right away: inspiration. The remainder of the movie is a hilarious comedy. However, it began as an imaginary collaboration between Anderson (who started making movies in 1992) and Dahl (1990), who had died.

This touching tribute gives way quickly to controlled chaos. Sugar finds a Z.Z. journal. Chatterjee is played by Dev Patel, an Indian doctor who lived in preindependent Calcutta. The original doctor, who was English in origin, is one of Anderson’s few updates to the perspective and material. Ben Kingsley’s Imdad (Ben Kingsley) is a magical, mysterious man who appears to see without sight. Dr. Chatterjee tells the story. As each character introduces a new layer of the story (which is to say, someone else’s story, told orally or written down), the setting rapidly transforms as clearly visible stagehands wheel new backdrops on and off screen.

It’s a wonderful, energetic film. Some characters, like Dr. Chatterjee, are also narrators, and must split their attention between the camera, as well as fellow actors (like Richard Ayoade, who plays a fellow doctor), but sometimes, it follows characters in an impossible third-dimension, where there is no place for them. It’s marvelously energetic, and it’s made all the more hilarious by the fact that some characters, like Dr. Chatterjee, function as narrators too, and are forced to split their attention between the camera, and fellow actors (like Richard Ayoade, who plays a fellow doctor).

Image: Netflix

Cumberbatch and his co-stars are constantly changing their makeup and costumes, both on screen and off. They play minor characters in the film, but they’re disguised as local actors, wearing heavy makeup. Crowds of additionals can be seen, but are never heard.

However, this cross-pollination of actors also speaks to the way each author seems to put a part of themselves into the tales they tell, even if they’re telling someone else’s story. Khan’s story doesn’t exist without Chatterjee, just as Chatterjee’s doesn’t exist without Sugar, and Sugar’s doesn’t exist without the nameless Dahl stand-in. It’s a fun game of “spot the star,” but also an expression of an artistic mission statement. Anderson’s distinctly recognizable style — easily imitated, but never replicated — is the way he puts himself into his stories.

Try as they might to imitate Anderson, people using AI tools to ape him or making TikTok or YouTube videos in his style lack both Anderson’s depth of influences (from Dahl, or from filmmakers like Satyajit Ray) and the ability to synthesize those inspirations into a uniquely personal, uniquely cinematic vision. Henry Sugar – The Incredible Story is slavishly adherent to its source material, but that aspect of its creation is a vital peek into Anderson’s creative process, depicting what may have been, in all likelihood, his own experience of reading the story and imagining his own version of it. It’s a short film, but its portrayal of inspiration, self-evident in both its artistry and homage, is simply enormous.

Henry Sugar: The Amazing StoryNetflix releases the new season on Sept. 27, 2017.