A Look At Wes Anderson’s Shorts of Roald Dahl

Kudos to Wes Anderson on his brilliant take on Roald Dahl’s classic wit.

I remember reading Roald Dahl in elementary school. Although it’s been nearly a decade since I last read his work, Dahl’s characters have a strikingly repulsive charm that keeps them as fresh in my mind as the days when I first encountered them. Dahl has a terrific talent for caricatures, accentuating the ugliest features of the people we hate to an absurd degree. Instead of a veil of immersion, Dahl makes sure that the reader is listening, really listening, to the grand insanity of his storytelling. In his distinctive sarcastic fashion, he turns tragedy into a cruel comical joke.

It isn’t everyone’s favorite style. It certainly wasn’t mine as a kid. Dahl writes simply and directly without any superfluous description or nuance. He offers a story of brilliance, daring, and insane possibility that leaves the reader stunned if not a little impressed.

Wes Anderson brings Dahl’s vision to life. Sure, Anderson’s rendition of Fantastic Mr. Fox as a full-length feature film was nothing short of masterful. But Anderson’s latest fifteen-minute adaptations of a short story collection are the closest work of media that has demonstrated the strange allure of Roald Dahl.