Wes Anderson has always had an unmistakable visual identity—the pastel colors, the symmetry, the stiff yet charming performances. But The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar takes that signature style and pushes it into something even more theatrical. Rather than trying to make you forget you’re watching a film, Anderson does the opposite: he makes you aware of the artifice. The sets look like stage flats; the actors narrate directly to the camera; the transitions feel like moving backstage in a play. It feels strange, whimsical, and oddly intimate. In this article, we explore how Anderson uses these kinds of deliberate stylistic choices to turn a simple, almost bedtime-story plot into a visually poetic experience.
The film starts with a sort of meta-introduction: Roald Dahl, played by Ralph Fiennes, speaks directly to the audience while sitting in a writer’s cabin that looks like it was assembled from cardboard cutouts. From the start, Anderson lets you know that this isn’t realism, this isn’t “cinema veritĂ©,” and it definitely isn’t trying to immerse you in some natural world. It is, rather, almost like watching a storybook come alive on a stage where every element is carefully curated. This then sets the tone for the entire film, in which narration becomes the primary engine of storytelling and everything visual works to support that narrative voice.
Symmetry is one of the most defining features of Anderson’s style. Every shot in his films seems like it has been measured with exact precision. In Henry Sugar, though, this precision is exaggerated because the frames are almost flat. Characters often stand dead center, facing the camera as if giving a monologue. The backgrounds are painted, very minimalistic, and almost downright fake looking. Rather than distracting, though, this flatness draws the viewer into the actors’ facial expressions and movements. The whole frame becomes a composition, almost like an illustration from a picture book.
Another key element Anderson uses narration—not just voiceover but spoken narration from the characters themselves. For large stretches, Benedict Cumberbatch (as Henry Sugar) narrates what he’s doing as he does it. This creates a kind of layering effect: in any one scene, the character performs an action, describes an action, and acknowledges that you are watching an action. It’s playful and self-aware and forces the viewer to engage with the film in a different way. You aren’t just a witness; you’re being spoken to, guided, and included in the storytelling process.
It is taken one step further by the theatrical staging of scenes: rather than natural transitions, we have stagehands sliding props into place, characters traversing multiple sets as if they’re passing from one wing of a theater to another, and backgrounds sliding in and out like paper panels. This controlled visual style has the whole film seeming to take place inside the imagination of a child—where everything is neat and bright and perfectly arranged. As a bedtime story, the plot is simple yet heightened in feeling.
Anderson’s visual minimalism also needs mentioning. The colors are bright and the designs intricate, yet the actual sets are very stripped down: a hospital room may feature nothing but a bed, a curtain, and a table; a mansion, nothing but one painted hallway. This minimalism places the audience’s concentration on movement, dialogue, and pacing rather than getting lost in realism. In essence, Anderson will have created a world where everything superfluous has been removed. What remains is rhythm, color, and emotion. These choices have a surprisingly powerful effect on the viewer. By reminding you constantly that this is a story being told, you start paying attention to how it’s being told: the framing, the pacing, the way the characters deliver lines almost like poetry. You don’t sink into the world; instead, you stand slightly outside it, and that distance creates its own immersion. You feel like a listener sitting beside a fire, hearing a fantastical tale read aloud, except now the tale is unfolding visually in front of you.
In the end, Anderson’s style works in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar because it fully embraces its own artificiality. It makes no pretense of being like other films. It doesn’t mask the wires or the painted backdrops. It proudly shows them off. For some viewers, this might all feel a bit too stylized, too controlled. But for others, like me, it becomes poetic. Proof that one doesn’t need realism for storytelling to work. Sometimes, just embracing the weirdness of theater, color, narration, and precision is what can make a simple story magical. The direction of Anderson creates Henry Sugar’s journey from a quirky Dahl short into a visual fairytale, where every frame feels like a page being turned.