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This review of Wes Anderson\u2019s <\/em><\/small>The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar<\/small> comes from the film\u2019s premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. The film will be released later this September.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Wes Anderson released the charming, melancholy Asteroid City<\/em>. It bore his signature children\u2019s pop-up book style, but in order to chip away at the hardened layers of grief, he presented his usual flourishes with uncanny restraint. His second release of 2023, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar<\/em>, <\/em>rushes in the opposite direction, replacing mournful silences with the nonstop rattle of narration while building exuberant layers of eye-popping fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

A 40-minute adaptation of a 70-page story, Henry Sugar<\/em> is as much Anderson\u2019s version of the tale as it is an ode to the author, Roald Dahl. (Anderson previously adapted one of Dahl\u2019s other children\u2019s books, 1970\u2019s Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/em>.) In fact, Dahl\u2019s short \u2014 part of the short-story collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More<\/em> \u2014 is so uniquely suited to Anderson\u2019s sensibilities, with its multi-layered narrative and imaginative whimsy, that this project is the closest page-to-screen translation in cinema.<\/p>\n

That may sound like hyperbole, but the way Anderson uses Dahl\u2019s text verges on experimental. It isn\u2019t the basis for his script, it\u2019s the script itself, with characters enacting the plot while narrating the prose word-for-word. They often follow their own lines of dialogue with \u201cI said\u201d and similar, turning briefly to the camera, as if they\u2019re all collectively reading the story to the audience.<\/p>\n

That idea could be misguided, but it creates a rapid-fire energy. Anderson had his cast practically memorize the entire story and deliver it in long, unbroken bursts, as they saunter between flats and painted sets that move to reveal new ones each time there story changes setting. If not for a handful of specific, pointed cuts used to emphasize poignant moments, it would feel as though the whole film were a stage production playfully shot in a single take.<\/p>\n

While the subject of the story appears to be wealthy gambler Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), the title is a bit of a bait-and-switch, since Henry only features prominently in the final third. The actual subject is the \u201cwonderful story,\u201d told by a narrator (Ralph Fiennes) who introduces Sugar just as he discovers a doctor\u2019s journal that records the recollections of an Indian man with the mystic ability to see without his eyes. Naturally, Sugar immediately thinks about how that ability could help him win card games. Right from the outset, this structure falls perfectly in line with Anderson\u2019s approach to several of his recent films (The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em>, The French Dispatch<\/em>, and Asteroid City<\/em>), in which a story\u2019s telling is as vital as the story itself.<\/p>\n