The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Wes Anderson says he long struggled to find a way in: it was Roald Dahl’s language that made the stories interesting, and without it he was not interested in adapting them. His answer: actors deliver Dahl’s prose straight to camera, Ralph Fiennes playing Dahl. Anderson describes the setup he reached early on: a small company, everyone playing more than one part, stagehands assisting, a peculiar version of a movie presenting a play. Sets slide like stage flats and the camera does not hide it; performers climb into costumes inside the shot. Production designer Adam Stockhausen built a three-dimensional model of every set first, to be sure the pieces would slot into place; cinematographer Robert Yeoman, at first sceptical, laid track so the 16mm camera could move fluidly. The opening sits in Dahl’s writing hut at Gipsy House, recreated or borrowed scrap by scrap. It is the first of four Dahl shorts released on Netflix on consecutive days, and it won Best Live Action Short Film at the 96th Academy Awards, the prize going to Anderson and Steven Rales. A good fit if you enjoy tracking which character has custody of the narration at any moment. Not for viewers who will find it mannered to hear actors read their lines and the surrounding prose in one breath.