Post by sgev1977 on Sept 29, 2023 21:56:28 GMT
This is a great review of the whole productions. It contains multiple spoilers,
www.vulture.com/2023/09/wes-andersons-henry-sugar-shorts-are-best-seen-together.html
It’s downright heartwarming. As Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri wrote in his review, the film has “a quaint, almost naïve optimism.”
But start to watch the rest of Anderson’s shorts and that optimism curdles. The Swan is a fable about a boy who is mercilessly bullied. The Rat Catcher is about a man (Fiennes) whose philosophy of rat-catching involves acting like one of the creatures himself and, at one point, killing a rat with his teeth. While the color palette of Henry Sugar is lush, with vibrant reds and blues, all the color is drained from these two later stories.
And then there’s maybe the most upsetting of them all: Poison.
But start to watch the rest of Anderson’s shorts and that optimism curdles. The Swan is a fable about a boy who is mercilessly bullied. The Rat Catcher is about a man (Fiennes) whose philosophy of rat-catching involves acting like one of the creatures himself and, at one point, killing a rat with his teeth. While the color palette of Henry Sugar is lush, with vibrant reds and blues, all the color is drained from these two later stories.
And then there’s maybe the most upsetting of them all: Poison.
To begin with Henry Sugar and end with Poison, which debuts last, is to grapple with an unsettling parallelism. Of all the shorts, those two are the most similarly cast with Cumberbatch, Patel, and Kingsley in key roles. And while, in the former, Cumberbatch’s character learns from Kingsley’s and ultimately becomes a better human,
Anderson’s work has long been darker than the TikTok memes that reduce it to a filter, aping its aesthetic and nothing else. The specter of violence often hangs in the corners of his perfectly constructed frames — the fascism implicit in The Grand Budapest Hotel or the suicidal melancholy in The Royal Tenenbaums, for instance. Collectively, these shorts are his grimmest output yet. Only one is about a man choosing selflessness; the rest are all in some ways about human cruelty.
in the latter Cumberbatch denigrates Kingsley.
Even the way the shorts approach India changes. The country has long been a subject of fascination for Anderson — which for some bleeds into fetishization, like in the case of The Darjeeling Limited. In Henry Sugar, India is a place of magic. In Poison, it’s where British rule is suffocating.Anderson’s work has long been darker than the TikTok memes that reduce it to a filter, aping its aesthetic and nothing else. The specter of violence often hangs in the corners of his perfectly constructed frames — the fascism implicit in The Grand Budapest Hotel or the suicidal melancholy in The Royal Tenenbaums, for instance. Collectively, these shorts are his grimmest output yet. Only one is about a man choosing selflessness; the rest are all in some ways about human cruelty.
Individually, each short is a brilliantly executed, faithful adaptation filled with Anderson’s technical mastery. You can spend your time just marveling at the choreography and the way the set pieces move. And yet watched as one, they make a case for the multitudes people contain: the capacity for wonder and kindness as well as unrepentant bigotry and meanness. It’s a statement on humanity, yes, but also on Dahl himself.
www.vulture.com/2023/09/wes-andersons-henry-sugar-shorts-are-best-seen-together.html