Today's Cinema Saturday post is about a film nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at this year's Academy Awards.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a 2023 American fantasy short film written and directed by Wes Anderson, based on the 1977 short story of the same name by Roald Dahl.
The film begins with writer Roald Dahl talking to us about how he is going to share the story of Henry Sugar (not his real name).
Henry Sugar is a bachelor with an inherited fortune. Like all people with a lot of money, Henry seeks to make more money and his most favored activity to that end is gambling.
One day, he comes across a book of a doctor's report of Imdad Khan, a man who claimed he could see and interact with the world without using his eyes.
After reading the tale of Imdad Khan, Henry Sugar figures he could do that too although the book makes clear that success is rare and if actually attained, takes years and years of patience and effort.
Henry Sugar is a man of immense inherited wealth and all he has is time.
Three years go by and Henry Sugar is able to reach a milestone in his meditations that allow him to see the other side of playing cards. Wow! This will make winning so easy.
It is also no longer so desirable.
Bored with the mere act of winning and obtaining more wealth, Henry Sugar elects to use his abilities for the benefit of others. Henry travels the world under different disguises, winning money from casinos. He uses this money to establish a network of successful hospitals and orphanages.
Two decades later, Henry dies from a pulmonary embolism.
Henry knew it was coming.
His power of seeing the other side of playing cards also allowed him to see the blood clot working it's way through his body.
Henry's accountant commissions Roald Dahl to write his story using the pseudonym Henry Sugar.
Yes, this film is based on a Roald Dahl story so we expect weird and quirky but it's also a Roald Dahl story turned into a film by Wes Anderson so weird and quirky is only the beginning.
What makes The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar unique is the way the film is presented.
The film begins with Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl talking to us, the viewer, about his daily habits of writing and segs into the story of Henry Sugar.
Then the telling of the story is handed off to Benedict Cumberbatch as Henry Sugar who talks to us, the viewer about his life and how it comes across his extraordinary book.
Then the tale is handed off to Dev Patel as Dr. Chatterjee and then to Ben Kingsley as Imdad Khan before it comes back around to Cumberbatch as Henry Sugar and so forth and so on.
Each central character makes unflinching eye contact with the camera and with a minimum of emotion tell the amazing tale of the man who could see without eyes and the astonishing success of Henry Sugar to gain those abilities and the effect it had on him.
The attached trailer gives you a taste of how this story is told.
We'll find out tomorrow if The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar will win the Oscar for Best Short Film at Sunday night's 96th Annual Academy Awards ceremony.
Tomorrow's Cinema Sunday looks at another film that was adapted from another source and received several nominations and awards in 1951.
Tomorrow, it's A Streetcar Named Desire.
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