“Frivolous thoughts in exciting moments.”
Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes appear in this retelling of Roald Dahl’s Poison, directed by Wes Anderson.
Cumberbatch is trapped. He cannot move, cannot leave his bed, or something horrific will happen to him. Nobody can see what the ‘something’ is. Which begs the question: Is it real?
Patel desperately attempts to help his friend, calling on a local Doctor. What follows is a mad and intense attempt to save him. Perhaps not intense; the atmosphere is more neurotic, reflecting Cumberbatch’s mental state as he sweats and panics, frozen in place. Utterly incapable of helping himself or properly explaining his true situation to others, he digs himself deeper into a pit of fear before working himself up into a frenzy after the source (or not) of his alarm is revealed. He thanks his friends by openly insulting and attacking them. Of course, it does not take an English Literature graduate to understand that perhaps what he is really working through is his own internal battles, which he physically shows by tearing into anyone who stays by his side.
Camera angles play a major part in setting the scene. Sideways, forwards, from above, from the ceiling, split screens; all are used to ping-pong between scenes and the man’s mental anguish. This is yet another excellent adaptation, with Dahl’s obsessive and unhinged characters careering into Anderson’s strict and purposeful scene-setting. Loss and loathing scar the small rooms in which the action takes place. Kingsley is wounded in the fray and exits the stage, leaving Patel to clean up the pieces and reassess his friendship with the awful, cornered, scared man in the bed.
