BEFORE: I've fallen behind again thanks to a weird combination of the Bosnian Film Festival, my annual appearance at the NYC Craft Beer, Wine and Spirits Festival, and a college presentation of thesis films from the Computer Animation Department. I got paid for going to two of those, but maybe not the ones you think. OK, it was exactly the ones you think. But someday they're going to pay me to attend the craft beer festival - I saw a guy on Jeopardy! last month who was a professional beer judge, and now I have a new career goal.
Normally the news that there is a new Wes Anderson feature would be met with much rejoicing here at the Movie Year - plans would be made to get to the movie theater ASAP because surely it's going to BE on the big screen, there will be a line, I'll have to get a ticket, plan a date and time when crowds of people are going to be doing something else, like maybe I can go on Thursday right after lunch and before my shift starts at the other movie theater, that sort of deal. I caught "Asteroid City" at the height of Barbenheimer madness two years ago, and I thought that was a really smart move, everyone else is over in Theater 1 or Theater 2 or both and me, I had a primo seat over in theater 11, down in the basement, and I was quite pleased with my planning skills and patting myself on the back the whole time.
But what am I supposed to do with this anthology of shorts, which I don't think played in movie theaters AT ALL? Well, sure, there's no market for short films, everybody knows that, especially in live theaters, who wants to pay $17 to go out and see a bunch of SHORT films? Even if there are four of them Frankenstein-edited together, and you're getting more bang for your buck that way, what kind of freak gets all dressed up and drags themself out of bed to go see SHORT films? Well, my kind of freak, but that's a bit beside the point, because this anthology is not in theaters, it's streaming on Netflix, so my best bet was to just put it on my list, make note of who's in it, and try to link to it as soon as possible. If they want to beam the new Wes Anderson movie right into my house, who am I to say no to that?
Ralph Fiennes carries over again from "Strange Days".
THE PLOT: Four tales unfold in writer-director Wes Anderson's anthology of short films adapted from Roald Dahl's beloved stories.
AFTER: OK, now that I've seen the anthology, and I've taken some time to correct the credits on IMDB (nobody carried the minor roles over from ALL of the shorts to the main feature, so I hope they'll allow me to correct that), I have to admit that once again I've encountered a feature that I just don't know what to do with. It's a weird move for Wes Anderson to make short films, when I'd grown so accustomed to his anthologies like "The French Dispatch" and "Asteroid City", both of which tried to tell several different stories all at once, and to some people that's a masterful technique of juggling and juxtaposing different characters, but to other people they may seem more like random melanges of plot points that shoot off in all directions at once. But on the other hand, what else was "The French Dispatch" but a collection of short films? It was like a whole Wes Anderson Film Festival of its own.
Let me remind everyone that I LOVED "Asteroid City", I called it the most Wes Anderson-y of all the Wes Anderson-y Wes Anderson movies out there. So weird, so vibrant, stories within stories within stories, every actor played at least two roles, part was in color, part was in black and white, and parallel plotlines also represented a film-within-a-film, I want to go watch that again right now, but instead I have to deal with this Henry Sugar nonsense.
I don't really like Roald Dahl, there, I said it. First off, his first name should be RONALD, not Roald, it always looks wrong to me, and how can I trust someone who doesn't even know what his own first name should be? Like somebody made a mistake on the birth certificate, just get that fixed and we can all move on. There are some sports stars, like Anfernee Hardaway, who have the same problem - the sooner we can deal with the fact that his mother didn't know how to spell "Anthony", we can all get on the same page. Right? And sure, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is a classic, and I'll watch and enjoy any version of a movie they make about that story. But beyond that, I don't know why other authors and filmmakers are obsessed with his work. "Fantastic Mr. Fox", I'll allow that one in, also "The Witches" and "James and the Giant Peach", but "Matilda"? That's kind of where I draw the line.
And I have a strong feeling that his other work, especially the stuff I don't already know about, probably sucks, and has not been adapted for good reasons. This Wes Anderson anthology just kind of proves that point, these are just not great stories. Great stories have beginnings, middles and endings, and they make sense and they go somewhere important - they don't all have to represent the hero's journey or mythic quests, or tell tales older than time, but they have to have a point, a reason for being, or use metaphor to enlighten some grander truth, and these just feel like they were all unfinished or they came from Dahl's reject pile. What's the deal, why the obsession with this author and the belief that everything he did was golden?
I remember reading the "Lord of the Rings" books when I was a kid, before we had the Ralph Bakshi animated version even, and they were slamming. After the LOTR craze hit, someone released another book of his called "The Silmarillion", which detailed like 1,000 years of Middle Earth history leading up to "The Hobbit" and it was just a terrible read, impossible to get through, very dry, just a list of characters and battles that were somehow important, but there was very little narrative or character development to grab on to, so really, who gave a shit?
Don't forget that the guy who directed "Star Wars" (well, some of them) also directed "Howard the Duck". And he told us it wasn't just going to be a guy in a duck costume, and it was just a guy in a duck costume. Spielberg directed "1941" and ruined all the reputation he had at the time for making "Jaws" and "Close Encounters". Sometimes good filmmakers make bad decisions, I've also heard a co-worker call it "artist brain", where an auteur can't POSSIBLY imagine that he's in the middle of making a piece of crap, or something that audiences just won't enjoy. Maybe that's what happened to Wes Anderson here, he was riding the high of "Asteroid City" and figured he couldn't possibly make a mis-step, but four short films that are all kind of pointless or unfinished (that's partially Roald Dahl's fault) sure seems like one to me. I think Dahl had a bit of "artist brain" too, but I think with authors it's a bit different, they HAVE to write the crappy ideas down so they can get them out of their heads and then have the brain-space to think up better ones.
But here's my new theory on Wes Anderson - if indeed we consider "Asteroid City" to be the most Wes Anderson-y film of all (kind of like how "Pulp Fiction" is the most Tarantino-ish movie) then if Mr. Anderson is going to continue to make films, then logically his next work can't be the most Wes Anderson-y film, because we already HAVE that, so then by nature it is going to be LESS Wes Anderson-y, or at least we have to change our definition a bit about what makes a Wes Anderson film a Wes Anderson film. But it can't be 100% in the same style, so unfortunately that means we're going to be moving away from perfection, toward something else. Or it represents the next step in the evolution of Wes Anderson, however you want to look at it - but this is just not "Asteroid City" and it never will be.
Let me take the four shorts one at a time, and see if that brings any insight overall - first is "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", which tells the story of a gambler who finds an old unmarked book about a man who could see without using his eyes. Great, this is an opportunity for a story-within-the-story, which is now a Wes Anderson trademark. But we get sidetracked here with the story of Imdad Khan and how he tracked down the Great Yogi to learn this mystical ability, and then started traveling around and performing in carnivals, asking doctors in each city to medically blindfold him and certify that he should NOT be able to see through bandages or sealed eyelids or whatever. Actually, since the book that Henry Sugar finds is written by one of those doctors, then Khan's story is really a story within a story-within-the-story, and so in the middle we're three levels deep. The combined story is told from the POV of Roald Dahl, then Henry Sugar, then Dr. Chatterjee, and finally Imdad Khan, as he tells the story of finding the Great Yogi and learning the powers of concentration, because it seems that if you can learn to focus your brain on JUST one thing (and it can be anything) then you will gain the power to see without using your eyes. NITPICK POINT: I'm a logical man, and as such I know that anyone who performs the "I can see even though I'm blindfolded" act is probably getting help from someone, either a handler who is giving him verbal clues about what object is in front of him, or a device on his body which is giving him vibrations or small electrical impulses of Morse Code. But this story's mythology would have you believe the impossible, that a blindfolded man could walk out of a hospital safely, or pedal a bicycle through traffic, and sorry, it's just not so.
Then we have to climb our way back out of the story, which is almost "Inception"-like, kind of waking up from the Imdad Khan story back to the Dr. Chatterjee story, so we can finish the Henry Sugar story and get back to Roald Dahl giving us zero insight about what just happened. Henry Sugar noticed that the book he found accidentally printed the technique by which Khan learned to focus his concentration, and it involved staring into a candle flame for hours at a time and gradually training his brain to focus on a single image and nothing else. NOTE: Do not try this at home, you will go blind or insane or both. Though it takes him over three years, Mr. Sugar (not his real name, though that doesn't matter) does gain the ability to see without his eyes, and he uses this to look through playing cards at casinos and determine what card is coming up next in blackjack, of course this is very valuable information to have, and he can hit on 19 if he knows the next card is a 2. This does draw some attention, so he decides to win only smaller jackpots and lose occasionally, so as not to appear as if he's cheating, which he is.
But a funny thing happens to Mr. Sugar (again, not his real name) and when he gains the ability to cheat at blackjack and win every time, he finds that since the game is no longer a challenge, he is much less interested in winning and making money. Great, so that was a total waste of three years of his life, and now he should either kill himself, or I don't know, maybe get a job? But for some reason he decides to keep playing blackjack, but travel around the world wearing various disguises so as to not tip anyone off, and use the money to fund various orphanages and other charities to continue taking from the rich to benefit the poor. Then he hires a writer, more or less at random, to tell his story after he dies, and that turns out to be Roald Dahl. For sure this was a random pick, otherwise he would have chosen a better writer, one who could write a complete story properly instead of just burying it in another story.
Next we have "The Swan", which is the story of Peter Watson, a young boy who is bullied by two other boys, one of whom got a hunting rifle for his birthday. The bullies use the gun to shoot birds, which is terrible enough as it is, but then they decide to use it on Peter, they tie him up with string and they lay him down on railroad tracks (not across, but it's still not good) to see if he will survive when the train passes over him. He does, but only because Peter manages to dig a small trench with his head and tucks his feet down. Then they use the rifle to shoot a swan, and they make Peter act like a bird dog and go collect the dead bird - Peter notices two small baby swans under the mama bird but says nothing about them, to protect them from the bullies. Then they cut off the swan's wings and make Peter climb a tree and jump off to try and fly. When he refuses, the bullies shoot at him and hit him in the leg, which causes him to fall, at which point he does fly, or he turns into a swan, or something - it's all a bit unclear, but he somehow ends up in his own backyard. We know he doesn't die, because the adult Peter Watson is also the narrator, but what does happen? Also, any good story about bullies should have a bit where the bullies learn their lesson, or the bullied kid gets some kind of revenge, but that seems to be absent here, well it was a different time. Still, the story feels very unfinished.
Next up is "The Rat Catcher", a story about a professional exterminator who has somewhat unorthodox methods, he believes that one has to out-think rats in order to kill them, like you can't just put poison out and expect them to eat it, you have to feed them something they want for a few days in a row, so they will expect to find food in that same spot, day after day, and then be more likely to eat the poisoned food once you finally put that down. This makes some sense - but when the rat catcher does put the poisoned oats into place, the rats do not eat them. He concludes that they must be getting better food elsewhere - but where? or from whom? We don't find out, thus this story also feels unfinished or unresolved. It ends when the rat catcher makes a bet that he can kill a rat without using his arms or legs, and instead kills it with his teeth. Well, at least that's disgusting enough to distract us from the fact that the story doesn't have a proper ending. As a bonus, we learn that the rat catcher believes that candy makers use rat blood to make licorice, and well, if we're talking about black licorice, I don't think he's wrong.
Finally there's "Poison", a film about Harry Pope, a man who is found by his friend in bed, lying still but awake, sweating profusely and in a state of panic. When his friend (roommate? lover? unclear) arrives to check on him, Harry whispers that there is a poisonous snake in his bed, and it's sleeping, he is afraid to move or make any loud noise because that would wake up the snake, who would probably attack him and kill him. There's some debate about what to do, but Harry's friend decides to leave quietly and call a local doctor, who can bring over some anti-venom, which can be given to Harry before the snake bites, and this should save his life. Once the antidote is administered, Harry's friend and the doctor slowly remove the sheet, and they can't find the snake. Harry then jumps up (after spending hours being unable to move) and he appears safe and alive, however he's still in a state of panic. When the doctor suggests that maybe Harry had a dream about a snake, Harry doesn't take it well, accused the doctor of calling him a liar, and uses some racial slurs (not a good look). This story also feels very unfinished because we the audience never see a snake, so we don't know what reality is, was it a dream or did the snake leave the room quietly? Is this some kind of metaphor for British colonization of India? Not sure.
All four short stories here are told in the same style, through fast-paced but deadpan narration, with the characters constantly breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience. And we're always aware that what we're viewing is some kind of stage-play (or, you know, maybe a movie) because there are stagehands coming and going, bringing in props or taking them away, and even the walls are set-pieces that can be lifted into or out of position when it's time for a scene change. And the whole thing is built on over-bearing almost cartoonish art direction, this brings to mind other Anderson films, like how animation was used in "The French Dispatch" when what was depicted could not be easily created in the real world, or being aware that the color scenes out in the desert in "Asteroid City" were a cinematic depiction of a staged play, and the black-and-white scenes were those same actors playing actors rehearsing for that play, but also living lives outside the stage, like also there is a backstage, which also isn't real because it's also a movie set.
Look, I get it, nothing is real in a movie, we all know this, but movies work because there's an illusion of a reality, which creates a suspension of disbelief. A movie has to LOOK real to create this other reality that does not exist, except for in the director's imagination and also the audience's imagination. If we know all along that we're not looking at anything real, that everything is an illusion and every actor is just an actor talking to us and telling a story, it ends up being a story that I can't believe at all because nobody took the time to make it look believable, in fact the complete opposite is true, somebody spent a lot of time and effort to make the story look like an unreal play, and they let me watch behind the scenes the whole time. Now what do I have to believe in, when the director has been winking at the audience for so long that his eye is constantly closed or maybe got stuck in that position? It's like the sands have been shifting for so long that we have quicksand as a result, and sure, it feels great to be pulled out of quicksand and maybe you might feel happy to be alive, but it would have been safer and perhaps easier to never step into the quicksand in the first place.
I'm forced to conclude here that maybe Mr. Anderson (can I call you Wes? Please?) should maybe take a little break, and think about that next film, I mean REALLY think about it. What kind of story do you want to tell? Does that story have a beginning, a middle and an ending? Is it a story that people want to see, will it leave them feeling entertained and maybe even good about themselves, instead of making them feel like they were just rescued from quicksand or maybe had a close call with an imaginary poisonous snake? After watching this film I had a nightmare that someone was trying to break into my house, and I had to yell at them through the front door to go away and not break in. Now, I don't blame "Henry Sugar" for my nightmare, in fact it's probably related to an incident that took place at the theater earlier that day, but still, the general feeling is the same. When stories get resolved properly, that leaves the audience with a better feeling, and we're all less stressed.
And if you're going to adapt some author's short stories, I don't know, maybe pick better ones?
Directed by Wes Anderson (director of "Asteroid City" and "The French Dispatch")
Also starring Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Dev Patel (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Rupert Friend (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Jarvis Cocker (ditto), Rebecca Cornford (ditto), Eliel Ford (ditto), Asa Jennings (last heard in "Sing 2"), David Gant (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Mita Chowdhury, Truman Hanks (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Benoit Herlin, Octavio Tapia, Till Sennhenn
RATING: 4 out of 10 costume changes
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