As per its yearly habit, in October 2021, Forbes published its top ten list of highest-paid dead celebrities. And for the first time, a writer took the top spot: Roald Dahl, who, in 2021, earned more than all the other members of the list (which included names like Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Dr. Seuss) combined. The reason? Dahl’s family had just sold the Roald Dahl Story Company to Netflix for over half a billion dollars.

Netflix didn’t wait too long before starting to construct this planned “expanded universe”, and one of the first bricks it laid in its foundation, together with the adaptation of Matilda the Musical, was its announcement that Wes Anderson was to adapt The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. All fine and dandy until earlier this year, when Puffin Books, Dahl’s publisher, announced that it would be purging his books of any parts it deemed disparaging, either by rephrasing them, removing them altogether, or, at times, even by adding new passages. The media uproar that erupted at the time went far beyond the petty controversies to which the literary world is accustomed. There has even been some speculation that Netflix is responsible for the decision made by Puffin Books (which The Roald Dahl Story Company has denied). Meanwhile, Anderson also criticized the decision, while Netflix only waited for things to settle down, and …Henry Sugar was joined by three other Dahl adaptations: The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison.

As for Netflix, Anderson was an obvious choice: he had already worked on an adaptation of Dahl, the successful Fantastic Mr. Fox, as far back as 2009. Since then, Anderson has had a distinctive career within American cinema: by now, one can count the number of living filmmakers with a comparable level of recognition strictly in terms of style of the fingers of one hand. The proof lies in a TikTok trend that went viral this spring, breaking into the mainstream. Of course, in this case, it doesn’t hurt that Anderson’s style is extremely intricate and labored, as stills from his films lend themselves very well to visually-oriented social media networks – Pinterest, Instagram, and, alas, TikTok.

That very same prioritization of form has also earned Anderson the lion’s share of criticism over the years. But there’s no need to pity him – he has no shortage of staunch defenders. (Film theorist Kristin Thompson laments the lukewarm reception of his recent Asteroid City by asking: Why do famous media companies hire critics who don’t even try to understand the films they review?) But the truth is that, over the past few years, Anderson’s style has undergone a slow and gradual calcification, as his films become increasingly Andersonian, rigidly so – for better or worse. To put it in DJ Khaled’s words, Anderson is suffering from success.

This is where The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar comes in: a tale about a rich man who, after accidentally discovering the secret of inner sight, plans to use it so that he may always win whenever he is gambling. At first glance, it’s easy to imagine how Wes Anderson would frame an adaptation of this story (I mean, if the above trend is anything to go by, we’re only one TikTok search away).

The short film begins just as you’d expect it to begin: with a narrative frame in which Roald Dahl (performed by Ralph Fiennes) sits down at his writing chair and begins to tell us the story. But even from these very opening shots, before we even get to move onto the story that lies inside the frame, where Benedict Cumberbatch (posh in his performance of Sugar) will take over the main narrative, it quickly becomes clear that what Wes Anderson is doing here is more than just offering us another reheated serving of “Wes Anderson”. Of course, he’s not stepping out of his comfort zone, either – not at all. But it’s as if the walls of said comfort zone are being moved around, not unlike the set pieces of a theater play. Or even like the sets in …Henry Sugar, which wanders around through the frame in real-time: Anderson’s mise-en-scene is more creative than ever. This is not just limited to the film’s visuals – what is perhaps Anderson’s most ingenious device here is the fast-paced cadence with which the actors narrate the story, mimicking the natural speed of reading and thus dictating the pace of the shorts included in this series: apart from …Henry Sugar (which could also easily be seen as a medium-length film), the other three shorts have a runtime of just 17 minutes each.

The main difference between …Henry Sugar and the other shorts has nothing to do with duration, however. In the following short, The Swan, the narrator (who is the character Peter Watson, performed by Rupert Friend) begins to recount a traumatic episode from his childhood. And if …Henry Sugar still lies somewhere on the very limit of what constitutes a children’s story, the violence of The Swan quite clearly states what the series’ intended audience is – the stories chosen by Anderson’ are some of Dahl’s bleakest.

Bleak as they might be, even so, the next short film, The Rat Catcher, which Anderson also directs, also proves to be the funniest of them all: here, a top-shape Ralph Fiennes performs (alongside the character of Roald Dahl) a rat catcher who is called in to investigate a mysterious infestation. Anderson has a very good grip on the tension within the sort, which increases proportionally with the discomfort of the narrator (performed by Richard Ayoade), culminating in a show-down between Fiennes and the Rat (initially animated in stop motion, then performed by Rupert Friend).

Poison, the final short in the series, brings together Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, and Dev Patel from …Henry Sugar. This time around, Cumberbatch plays the role of an English military man who has been assigned to the British Raj, and one day discovers that he has a poisonous snake on his belly. In light of the recent scandal surrounding Dahl, the storyline of Poison, with its anti-colonialist echoes, is a very wise and appealing choice to end this series of adaptations that Anderson directed for Netflix. Of course, it’s hard to say if this was planned from the very beginning (and if so, it would be somewhat cynical) or if the timing was just right. What’s certain is that the controversy surrounding Dahl isn’t in any way recent, nor will it die down anytime soon.

As for Anderson, he could even adapt the writings of Romanian children’s author Emil Gârleanu from now on, for all I care. The important thing is to be as inspired as he is here. And that’s no small thing.

Codrin Vasile

He studied directing at UNATC, where he wrote articles for Film Menu. He also wrote his degree paper on D.A. Pennebaker’s early filmography. He is interested in analog photography and video art. He hopes for a Criterion release of Shrek 2. He makes movies.