Intentional Artificiality: How Wes Anderson Made a Change in His New Film
When I stumbled across the trailer of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, almost immediately, I recognized whose film it is. There is always at least one defining trait that reveals it is a Wes Anderson film: either it’s the meticulously symmetrical compositions, the color scheme, the star-studded cast, or simply the way the camera pans- the tiniest elements in the scenes can indicate that it is from the same person, the same soothingly quirky aesthetic style.
Wes Anderson’s 39-minute long short film for Netflix came out in late September. This is his second adaptation of Roald Dahl’s stories since the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009. The story revolves around Henry Sugar, a wealthy and self-obsessed man who learns about an Indian guru’s ability to see without his eyes, and goes on to master this trick to cheat at card games.
Ever since The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson seemed to have grown an increased obsession with the stories-within-story structure, and took it to the extreme in his new film. The entire film progresses with a script composed faithfully to Dahl's story, and was presented as a stage play in movie form. We see Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, and Ralph Fiennes constantly breaking the fourth wall by looking and talking directly towards the camera, along with narrating their actions in the delivery of lines. Watching the film is like listening to a fast-paced audiobook with alternating pictures. In fact, Dahl did record himself doing some of his books. The director explained in his interview with Deadline that he’d always loved the story with simply Dahl’s voice throughout it, and thus was inspired to use this particular form of storytelling in the movie- “Well, there’s one way to keep his voice — just use it.”
This filming approach in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar may appeal to many as innovative, but it does have its cons. The staging of sets are in theatrical frames with individual sets split to reveal the next layer of background, and pieces of scenery are manually moved in and out of frame. In addition, the film has no shortage of distractions: stagehands would appear in the scenes when there is a need for costume and prop changes, and the actors frequently narrated their dialogue tags like “I said” into the camera after their lines. The whole movie has a deliberate artificiality to it that was meant to be difficult for audiences to engage in.
This sense of artificiality in Anderson’s new film does not just come out of nowhere as one can tell that his aesthetics has continuously evolved from film to film. In his latest long-form film Asteroid City, Wes Anderson began the picture with a long dolly shot, and employed miniature sets and models extensively throughout the movie, which was not a typical technique for most filmmakers nowadays. I personally found that there was something about the physical texture of miniature models that digital visuals like CGI can never replace, even though at times, audiences may pick up on bits and pieces of “unrealness.” Nevertheless, Wes Anderson unarguably has a touch on retro-style filmmaking, and he once revealed that “the particular brand of artificiality that I like to use is an old-fashioned one.” Unlike many film directors in his era, Wes Anderson chose to embrace and exploit the existing artificiality in films rather than eschewing away from it. The increasing trend of incorporating old-fashioned artificiality in films was an important element in understanding his gradual shift in style in recent works that generally conveyed a sort of dreamly-exquisite visual effects with less emphasis on plot-wise.
In The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, however, the concept of artificiality came out as much more intentional than in his other pictures. In the various meditation scenes in this film, the actors’ bodies appeared to be suspended in air, but audiences would soon discover they were actually meditating on small cubicle chairs that camouflaged into the background, and it was no magic or special effects, as actors literally get up and rotate the chair later in the scenes. This kind of purposely showcasing of the “fakeness” of set pieces was a bold move, even for Wes Anderson. In a way, the film itself can be seen as a test for viewers to see if one is still able to sympathize and relate to the characters if the entire setup was made to look neither authetic nor believable.
Earlier this year, there was a viral Wes Anderson TikTok trend which refers to filming everyday lives in Wes Anderson’s cinematic style. It’s no surprise that people tend to have this stereotypical impression on the visuals of Wes Anderson films, but to him, every movie was an invention, a different take on the existing aesthetic style in his previous pictures. As Anderson suggested in one interview, “you find the thing you like, and then you do it again… and then you say, 'OK, I’m going to try a different thing here.'” So while people are imitating his “signature aesthetics,” Wes Anderson was busy overturning the traditional filmmaking formats. A mix of theater play, cinematic movie, and fast-paced audiobook, this new genre of Wes Anderson films might be a little hard to get used to, but definitely guarantees a one-of-a-kind viewing experience.
