Another of three shorter Wes Anderson Roald Dahl adaptations made to accompany The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Poison is a strange tale of man caught up in the grip of a paranoid delusion, with a vague whiff of Colonial guilt.
Poison is set in India, a setting captured generically by distinctive sets and good sound design, and concerns a white man named Harry who is lying in bed, gripped by terror due to the venomous snake dozing on his belly beneath his sheets. Dev Patel narrates again and also plays Woods, Harry's friend, who enlists the help of Ben Kingsley's Dr. Ganderbai to deal with the snake whilst minimising the risk to Harry's life. Ralph Fiennes is also back - briefly - as Dahl.
It boasts the same impressive mise-en-scéne and acting/narrating as its companion shorts, with a sweaty Cumberbatch delivering most of lines without moving his lips, as Harry tries to avoid disturbing the snake. Kingsley brings great urgency to the role of Dr. Ganderbai, only to be met with a string of racist bile from Harry once the twist - that there is no snake after all - is revealed. The disturbingly realistic sourness of Woods' verbal abuse possibly lends a double meaning to the title.
Together with the other three Anderson shorts, Poison shows how twisted but also how varied Dahl's imagination could be. The director's distinctive approach to adapting these tales has been highly effective; whether there will be more to come remains to be seen, but Dahl wrote a great many short stories and there are plenty of rich pickings yet to adapt should Anderson - or anybody else - wish to do so.
Poison is set in India, a setting captured generically by distinctive sets and good sound design, and concerns a white man named Harry who is lying in bed, gripped by terror due to the venomous snake dozing on his belly beneath his sheets. Dev Patel narrates again and also plays Woods, Harry's friend, who enlists the help of Ben Kingsley's Dr. Ganderbai to deal with the snake whilst minimising the risk to Harry's life. Ralph Fiennes is also back - briefly - as Dahl.
It boasts the same impressive mise-en-scéne and acting/narrating as its companion shorts, with a sweaty Cumberbatch delivering most of lines without moving his lips, as Harry tries to avoid disturbing the snake. Kingsley brings great urgency to the role of Dr. Ganderbai, only to be met with a string of racist bile from Harry once the twist - that there is no snake after all - is revealed. The disturbingly realistic sourness of Woods' verbal abuse possibly lends a double meaning to the title.
Together with the other three Anderson shorts, Poison shows how twisted but also how varied Dahl's imagination could be. The director's distinctive approach to adapting these tales has been highly effective; whether there will be more to come remains to be seen, but Dahl wrote a great many short stories and there are plenty of rich pickings yet to adapt should Anderson - or anybody else - wish to do so.