A beloved Roald Dahl story about a rich man who learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling. A film by Wes Anderson, staring Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Jarvis Cocker.
The Wonderful Story
of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson
(2023)
A fantasy short film, based on a Roald Dahl short story of the same name from the 1977 collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.
The film, narrated by Roald Dahl (Ralph Fiennes), follows the enigmatic life of Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy 41-year-old man who inherits a large fortune from his deceased father. Never married, Sugar is too selfish to share his wealth with another woman. Content with his affluent lifestyle and having never worked a day in his life, Sugar harbors a deep desire to increase his riches, particularly through gambling.
On a summer weekend, Henry Sugar drives from London to the countryside to visit Sir William W. While the host and other guests play games in the drawing room, Henry wanders through the magnificent house, eventually finding himself in the library. There, he notices a peculiar slim book protruding from the surrounding volumes. He pulls it out and discovers that it is a report written in December 1935 by Dr. Z. Z. Chatterjee about a man named Imdad Khan, who can see without his eyes.
On December 2, 1935, Dr. Z. Z. Chatterjee (Dev Patel), head surgeon at Lords and Ladies Hospital in Calcutta, and his colleagues — Dr. Marshall (Richard Ayoade), Dr. Mitra (Mita Chowdhury), and Dr. Macfarlane — encounter a small man in the doctors’ rest room. He introduces himself as Imdad Khan, a performer in a traveling theater who has arrived in Calcutta that day. Revealing that it is his company’s tradition for him to visit the largest hospital in town and ask the doctors to bandage his eyes and conduct a series of tests to prove his ability to see without his eyes, Khan challenges the doctors to debunk his claim.
Dr. Z. Z. Chatterjee attends traveling theater performance at the Royal Palace Hall, where he witnesses Imdad’s even more mesmerizing feats. He asks Imdad for an interview about how he acquired this extraordinary ability, hoping to publish it in the British Medical Journal, which Imdad agrees. Imdad recounts his tale of learning the secret meditation technique from the Great Yogi as a young teenager, which granted him the ability to see without his eyes after eight years of practice. Tragically, Imdad is found dead in his sleep the following day, before he can reveal the other methods of transmitting images to the brain.
Intrigued by Imdad’s story, Henry Sugar furtively removes the report from the library and returns to London, where he immediately begins practicing Imdad’s meditation method. To his astonishment, he progresses at an incredible speed. Within a year, Henry can see the other side of the top card of an upside-down deck of cards in four minutes. However, to use this ability effectively in real card games, he must reduce the time to five seconds.
Wes Anderson’s second Roald Dahl adaptation, after FANTASTIC MR. FOX, showcases his signature style with heavily stylized pastel color palettes and quirky characters speaking at a rapid pace. Every object and scene moves beautifully in multiple perfectly synchronized stage changes, reminiscent of mechanical clockwork.
It is considerably a faithful adaptation of the source material. However, one of Anderson’s flaws is that, while he can make puppets feel alive, the characters in this short film feel like puppets, with little emotion or feeling.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar premiered at Biennale di Venezia on 1 September 2023. Following its limited theatrical release on 20 September, the film became available for streaming on Netflix on 27 September.
