Wes Anderson's quartet of short films based on Roald Dahl stories appears on Netflix. At I write this note, two of those films have "dropped", that is, been added to the streaming service. They are The Wonderful Story of Harry Sugar and The Swan. (Since beginning this note, the other two movies, The Ratcatcher and are now available as well.) Both 2023 pictures exemplify Anderson's extremely mannered and abstract film grammar, a style of movie-making that is instantly recognizable; he signs his films with each and every shot. To my eye, Anderson's schematic and serenely detached mise-en-scene, invoking ancient films like Louis Feuillade's Judex (1916) and Fantomas (1913) is alienating and, even, a bit tedious. Anderson uses techniques that, more or less, precede the kind of montage used in all commercial films after Griffith's Biograph work around 1909. He establishes tableaux that are symmetrically constructed and carefully color coded and, then, moves his actors laround like mannequins in the tiny boxes in which he has placed them. The camera seems stationary although, at times, he tracks forward or backward to better survey the dioramas that he has created. The result is picturesque if claustrophobic but I must concede the rigor of Anderson's experimentation and the weird consistency with which he makes his movies. Of course, the risk, as I see it, is that Anderson's style is so egregiously self-referential and "meta-narrative" that he runs the risk of vanishing up his own asshole. However, the short films on display on Netflix are highly disciplined, imaginatively conceived, and staffed with first rate actors. These pictures seem to be avant-garde spectacles but produced with lots and lots of money and displaying, at a carefully (and intentionally offputting) distance some excellent performers. It's all precious, geometrical, and obviously contrived -- there's not an instant in these films in which the viewer is allowed to forget that this is all just a movie of a particularly unpersuasive sort with respect to the viewer's expectations as to realism and, further, that this confection with its candy-colored sets and burly supernumeraries moving the painted flats around is the work of Wes Anderson.
The Wonderful Story of Harry Sugar stars no less than Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, Ralph Fiennes playing Roald Dahl and several other parts, and Ben Kingsley who acts the part of a Indian conjuror who has learned how to see without his eyes. The movie is a Russian doll with elaborate frames enclosing other frames -- at the film's outer level, the picture shows of Dahl writing the story in a place called the Gipsy Cottage; Dahl narrates the story of Harry Sugar which commences with the spoiled aristocrat spending a dull afternoon at country manor house. Sugar finds an unusual book on the shelf in the manor's library, an account of how a Indian magician was trained by a curmudgeonly guru to see without using his eyes. It's quite clear why Anderson has chosen this rather unprepossessing tale -- the technique for mastering sight without eyes involves rigorous, self-effacing discipline, something similar to startling and austere technique employed in the film. Harry Sugar is a quick study and he spends only three-and-half-years mastering the meditative procedures necessary for this kind of seeing. (It took Ben Kingsley's character twenty years or more to learn this art.) Once Sugar has learned to see without his eyes, he goes to a casino and, of course, breaks the bank playing blackjack. But the rigors of the discipline required to learn to see without eyes have changed Sugar from the relatively frivolous and rapacious jerk that we first met; now, he sees no value in worldly goods at all. The day after his triumph, he throws away his fortune, tossing currency off the roof of his flat. This causes a riot and earns him a reprimand from a constable (Fiennes in a police uniform) who berates him for not giving the ill-gotten money to charity. Chastened, Sugar spends the rest of his life making millions at casinos and, then, donating the money to worthy causes. One day, looking in the mirror, he sees a blood clot approaching his heart and knows that the end is nigh. So he dies. The story is embedded in its frames and reverts to Dahl narrating the rather inconsequential tale; Anderson's commitment to framing the central plot is so intense that he stages part of the scene with the Hindu fakir using another frame -- two doctors as a Calcutta Hospital who have been enlisted to bind shut the magician's eyes so that no one can claim that he is able to see somehow through the huge globular headware that they put over this face. The story is only marginally interesting and has no real pay-off. At one point, a couple of melodramatic conclusions to the tale, a bit like the narrative in X-the man with X-ray eyes are suggested, but Dahl rejects those plots. The story is literally narrated with the characters even supplying phrases such as "he said" and the like. The picture proceeds through a series of static tableaux that seem to ingeniously incorporate changes of scene hidden behind the painted theatrical flats against which the tale is performed. The story is not very interesting once the novelty wears off; you can't enjoy the acting because Anderson films his actors mostly in the middle or, even, remote distance -- they are just figures on a stage.
Anderson's 17 minute The Swan is better because it is shorter and the film's idiosyncrasies don't pile up to irritate the viewer. The story, again by Dahl, is an alarming account of violence and vicious cruelty that is more than a little disturbing. Again, the feral subject matter is scrupulously distanced and aestheticized by Anderson's mannered direction. Two bullies get a gun and go out to murder small song birds. They encounter a teenager named Peter Watson who is bird-watching and, of course, disapproves of their avian carnage. They beat him up and, then, tie him lengthwise to a railroad track. A big diesel train roars over him but he is unscathed. Then, they drag him to a pond where a swan is sitting on her nest. They kill the swan, cut off its wings, and tie them to Winston's arms. He is forced into a willow tree and, then, coerced into leaping fifty feet into the mud puddle. Of course, Watson flies like a swan through the air and drops to the earth in front of his mother who cries: "My darling, my darling boy, what's happened to you." Again, Anderson puts a frame around this gruesome tale -- the narrator turns out to be Peter Watson telling the tale 27 years later. A handwritten closing titles tells us that Dahl wrote the story for publication in 1976 and that he based the rather improbable story on an newspaper account that he read years before writing the story. The story begins with the characters hemmed in by a long high corridor of hay bales; stagehands step out of the sides of hay bale wall to provide various props. The story is narrated with the Peter Watson character mimicking the voices of the nasty bullies. The scenes involving the swan are accomplished with the barest of means -- an animated willow tree, an animated nest and bird, and, then, some gory-looking swan wings. In general, Watson delivers the narrative at very high speed in a brusque, clipped tone. The moral of story, something about courage and indomitable fortitude, is delivered by Fiennes in a sweaty-looking medium shot looking straight into the camera. I thought the story quite predictable but gripping -- accounts of motiveless human cruelty always exercise an evil fascination. The film's highly imaginative staging with no pictorial resources to speak of but some painted flats and railroad tracks probably bears close study. The procession of images is fluent and highly logical.
Also at 17 minutes, The Rat Catcher is a kind of horror film, very frightening and excellently made. (I'm concerned that I think each of these pictures better than the preceding work -- I'm not sure if this is legitimate or a consequence of becoming increasingly acclimated to Anderson's various Entfremdungs-effects. The Ratcatcher features an astonishing performance by Ralph Fiennes as the titular character. A protagonist needs someone to talk to -- the role of the baffled interlocutors are played by Richard Ayoade and Rupert Friend (who narrated The Swan as well.) The Rat-catcher is hired to dispatch the vermin in hay stack (the thing looks like a Monet painting). The Rat-catcher and his clients are shown full frontally against a painted backdrop of small town businesses. The Rat-catcher is a horrific figure and looks a bit like a rat himself. He carries live rats in his pocket as well as ferret that he uses to prey upon the rats that accompany him. There is much talk about the cunning of rats and how difficult they are to kill. The rat exterminator puts horribly lethal (it could kill a million men he says proudly) poison oats around the haystack but, for some reason, the rats don't take the bait. Humiliated by his failure, the ratcatcher performs two tricks -- the first is awful but far less horrific than the second; the tricks appall the ratcatcher's interlocutors. There is a nasty animated or stop-action rat, a scrawny cadaverous beast that looks like a nightmare out of The Fabulous Mr. Fox. At various points, each of the actors mimics a rat. The whole thing is beautifully choreographed. There are two memorable lines: when one of characters says that he's surprised that a noble lady in the neighborhood has a rat problem, the Rat-Catcher snarls "Everyone's got rats." At the end of the story, the narrator observes that it's odd that the rats didn't eat the poison by the hay stack, saying "There must be something nutritious in the haystack" -- in context, this line is strangely horrifying; it gave me the shivers. At one point, after biting off the head of a live rat, the Rat-catcher chastises his interlocutors by saying that everyone knows that black licorice is made of rat blood. I didn't know this but will never look at licorice the same way again -- he also makes the same remark about chocolate. The story posits rats and their behavior as being a sort of original sin, a mark that the world is irrevocably evil.
Poison is the last film in the quartet. I don't think the pictures have to be seen in any particular order, although it is probably best to start with The Wonderful Story of Harry Sugar. The stories don't build on one another and don't allude to the other tales. Harry Sugar establishes the motif of the haggard and ill-looking Roald Dahl commenting on the narratives from his writing room, an element of the pictures that might be very unclear to viewers who start with one of the shorter films. The three pictures, Poison, The Rat Catcher, and The Swan can be watched in any sequence that the viewer desires and each movie is only 17 minutes long, a curious decision as to duration, but uniform for this trio of films. Poison is the most theatrical of these pictures; it is essentially staged as three-set one-act play -- there are some analytical vertical shots, but, by and large, the movie is the record of stage-play. During the 1930's, a British officer lies motionless in his bed; he believe that a small, highly venomous krait, some kind of viper, has coiled up on his belly and gone to sleep. The krait is so toxic that a single bite will turn your blood to black pudding. A subaltern, played by Dev Patel, arrives at the Englishman's bungalow -- this is an exterior shot of a painted set. (The other two sets are the yellow bedroom and the blue kitchen in the house.) He discovers his boss, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, trapped in bed, fearful of moving a muscle. The subaltern summons an enterprising Indian doctor, Dr. Gabardei (Ben Kingsley) and the two men devise ingenious means to save the Englishman. First, he is injected with the antivenom in case the snake bites him; then, chloroform is fed under the covers to knock the snake out. When it is thought that the snake is anesthetized, they pull off the sheets. But no snake is found. Dr. Gabardei suggests that the Englishman dreamt the presence of the snake. This causes the soldier to fly into a rage. An Indian subject is not allowed to imply that an Englishman is lying. He insults Dr. Gabardei, who has risked his own life to rescue him, calling the dignified doctor a "Bengali sewer rat." Garbardei and the subaltern depart; Patel's character tries to apologize for his British boss saying that the stress of the situation caused the man to say cruel and unwarranted things. Dr. Gabardei tells the subaltern that it is not his place to apologize for the Englishman and the two of them drive away from the bungalow. The "poison" referred to in the movie's title is incipient racism. The Englishman apparently views India as rife with concealed and treacherous dangers, symbolized by the krait. When this view is challenged, the Englishman's bigotry is revealed. There are several little details worth mentioning. The subaltern arriving at the bungalow says that he counts each step in the dark because he doesn't want to take a last step that doesn't actually exist and fall. This suggests the power of the imagination, that is, tripping over something that is not there. When Cumberbatch's supine body is revealed, the subaltern observes that his pajama fly is closed with a pearl inlaid button -- suggesting the gratuitous wealth and ease in which the English master lives. Tiny points of this sort contribute to the viewer's understanding that the plot is some sort of allegory for the British presence in India, for colonialism and for prejudice. (It is perhaps worth noting that the plot of Poison is similar to Ambrose Bierce's "The Man and the Snake" in which the protagonist sees what he thinks is a live snake, succumbs to terror and dies of fear -- in fact the snake in this 1890 story is a toy with buttons for eyes.)
Poison is interesting in light of recent accounts of Roald Dahl's unrepentant bigotry. The man was racist and anti-Semitic. Yet, Poison implies a sort of anti-venom deployed against Dahl's own prejudice. In some way, the story can be construed, if not as a justification for Dahl's bigotry, but, at least, as a counter-measure of sorts.
In general, this series of films is very intriguing, made in a remarkable manner, well-acted, and worth seeing.
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