Scrumdiddlyumptious, or fizzlecrump?
"Whimsical" and "fantastical" are often used to describe the magical fiction of Welsh author Roald Dahl, whose stories, ostensibly for children, have an undercurrent of adult sentiment, mischief, and acerbic wit. His match has been met in recent years in American auteur Wes Anderson, and lately this year in his confectionery, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," a short, 40 minutes derived from Dahl's short story collection of the same name. Yes, it is by definition "a short," yet inexplicably longer than it ought to be.
Anderson's remarkable film career has been on the radar of admirers since "Bottle Rocket" in 1996, his directorial debut at twenty-seven, followed by "Rushmore" in 1998. With Jerry-built plots of comedy and gloom, mistaking character development for quirky and loopy, and endings that deflate like party balloons, their singular style has wormed its way ad nauseam into the collective unconscious of the current wave of filmmakers and writers, the results of which can be sampled on Netflix, ad nauseam.
The word often attributed to Anderson is "postmodern," a catch all for anything that defies explanation in words of one syllable. No one can fault him for this, as he is, without question, an interesting artist who inspires debate, revulsion, and love. This "short" is a case in point. Unlikely to ever become a perennial favorite, like "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang," it is at least not longer than 40 minutes because any longer would have been sensory overload.
Typical now of Anderson's eccentric visual style, the film is, in effect, a colorful, three-dimensional, pop-up book, although oddly flat, despite forced perspectives, yet by laterally moving the camera, to cut from one scene to the next, as if flipping the pages of a book, there is a fluidity, too, like the sweeping camera moves in a Max Ophuls' film. But, not quite. Nothing in an Anderson film is like anything previously seen.
Conceptually, it's not even a film. In fact, by having actors directly address the audience, disclosing the fictive world, using perfunctory, mechanical line readings to alienate them further from any character identification, his work is, perhaps intentionally, an endorsement of one of Dahl's "revolting rules": "Films are fun...but books are better!"
Anderson's remarkable film career has been on the radar of admirers since "Bottle Rocket" in 1996, his directorial debut at twenty-seven, followed by "Rushmore" in 1998. With Jerry-built plots of comedy and gloom, mistaking character development for quirky and loopy, and endings that deflate like party balloons, their singular style has wormed its way ad nauseam into the collective unconscious of the current wave of filmmakers and writers, the results of which can be sampled on Netflix, ad nauseam.
The word often attributed to Anderson is "postmodern," a catch all for anything that defies explanation in words of one syllable. No one can fault him for this, as he is, without question, an interesting artist who inspires debate, revulsion, and love. This "short" is a case in point. Unlikely to ever become a perennial favorite, like "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang," it is at least not longer than 40 minutes because any longer would have been sensory overload.
Typical now of Anderson's eccentric visual style, the film is, in effect, a colorful, three-dimensional, pop-up book, although oddly flat, despite forced perspectives, yet by laterally moving the camera, to cut from one scene to the next, as if flipping the pages of a book, there is a fluidity, too, like the sweeping camera moves in a Max Ophuls' film. But, not quite. Nothing in an Anderson film is like anything previously seen.
Conceptually, it's not even a film. In fact, by having actors directly address the audience, disclosing the fictive world, using perfunctory, mechanical line readings to alienate them further from any character identification, his work is, perhaps intentionally, an endorsement of one of Dahl's "revolting rules": "Films are fun...but books are better!"
- jgreco7
- Sep 27, 2023