Whether Anderson views Dahl’s works as children’s stories isn’t clear to me, he doesn’t interpret them on screen for children’s enjoyment at least. On a second viewing of Henry Sugar, the kids wandered in and out without their interest being piqued in the slightest. There is a sense of childish innocence within it though - the story is told like a primary school production. The dialogue is almost entirely in direct address to camera, in Anderson’s signature monotone. Ben Kingsley, who plays Imdad Khan, The Man Who Can See Without Eyes, does a particularly endearing job of appearing like a nervous adolescent reading a speech he might title “The summer I learned to meditate.” Khan’s technique is to focus on the image of the person he loves most in the world. I wonder if Greg meditates on the image of my face?
Among their many parallels, Anderson and Dahl both revel in invoking wonder. For Dahl, it’s his fantastical stories that he assures children are absolutely true and, for Anderson, it’s his intricate set design and clever practical effects. Watching Anderson’s adaptations of Dahl’s stories is akin to reading the books in the form of an interactive pop-up - pulling tabs to change the scenery and opening windows to reveal new worlds. It sparks a little wonder even in the most curmudgeonly couch mate. Marvelling at these creations however sustains my interest for no more than 40 minutes, which is why Anderson is so perfectly suited to the short film format. Perhaps if I meditate daily on the image of Greg’s face, I could get that up to 50 or 60.
HE SAW
It was a rainy Saturday morning in the 1980s when I stumbled across Roald Dahl’s Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in my brother’s bedroom, read it in one wide-eyed sitting, and had my understanding of the power of the human mind changed forever.
The story was, in the most literal sense of the word, magic. A rich man discovers meditation and practises it with such dedication, at such length, that he is eventually able to focus his mind powerfully enough to see both through playing cards and into the future, allowing him to win unlimited money, which he then realises he doesn’t need, so gives it all away to help needy kids.
When I finished reading the story, I asked my dad if it was true, as its narrator had claimed. He told me it wasn’t, but the story had been so convincing and so powerful, and had given me so much hope that I too might one day be able to win unlimited money at the world’s casinos that I felt I had no choice but to disbelieve him.
I remember sitting on the floor of my brother’s bedroom, trying to focus my mind on a single thought, as Henry Sugar had done to such great effect. I knew the road would be hard but I didn’t realise it would be so hard that I would be, nearly 40 years later, trying for the umpteenth time to start a regular meditation practice.
The nature of time is central to this movie: How much of it do we have, how best to use it, how much to invest now to reap benefits in future, how to manipulate it using only the power of our minds. Time might be money, Dahl seems to be saying, but what is money?
When I read the book in the 1980s, no one outside a commune took meditation seriously. Today, it’s so mainstream as to make the story of Henry Sugar look a little quaint. We all know the power of meditation now, and it’s not to make us rich or even help us see the way to building orphanages: it’s to help us deal with the fact our attention spans have been so shortened by tech billionaires that 39 minutes feels about the right length for a movie.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is streaming now on Netflix.
