This delightful amuse-bouche from the tireless Wes Anderson will surely put some minds at rest about Netflix’s wholesale absorption of the Roald Dahl empire. After the frustratingly unfocused Asteroid City, the American director – working over just 37 minutes – concentrates his attention to greater purpose on a busy 1977 story that saw the author at his very sharpest. This was the one about the society bloke who discovers the secret of seeing through opaque matter. Henry Sugar initially uses the gift for gambling, but ultimately gives in to the sort of moral self-correction you never quite believe the cynical Dahl has his heart in.
And here is the author in the famous shed at the bottom of his garden. Who better than Ralph Fiennes, voice drier than chilled Fino, to ventriloquise the apparently immortal prose? He begins in a variety of muddled frustration, before throwing himself into a breathless recitation of the story being adapted.
Whereas the (albeit feature-length) Asteroid City shifted from Broadway yarn to sci-fi comedy to chaste romance, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is, from the start, firm in its devotion to one, eminently suitable style. Featuring many long takes, employing ingenious practical effects, allowing nested sets to lift and transport actors across the globe, Henry Sugar has the character of a travelling show mounted in a cramped auditorium. At times it plays like lavish Punch and Judy. At others like a Brechtian parable.
Sustaining that illusion, the intimate band of actors double up on some roles. Benedict Cumberbatch, the lead, could hardly be better cast for a reformable louche at large in London clubland. Ben Kingsley keeps a straight face as the mystic who inspires Sugar’s magical leap forward. Dev Patel, Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade compete to better each other for comic timing. As you will gather, it’s all very male, but this is set in a world where men still felt empowered to define the culture. There is a hangover from empire. There is a sense of post-public school malaise.
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As in the best of Anderson’s work, there is a lesson in here about the addictive balm of storytelling. We got that in the director’s adaptation of Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox. If that convinces you – and it should – that Anderson and Dahl are ideal bedfellows then remain excited for three more adaptations featuring the same team arriving to Netflix in coming days.
Streams on Netflix from September 27th
