Spoilers

I watched the third of the four new live action shorts from Wes Anderson on Netflix, shorts that adapted work from author Roald Dahl.

Tonight’s film was The Swan, and it had the same original presentation that the other two films that I had watched so far on the streaming service. The actors, in this case, Rupert Friend, was our narrator and walked through the story. I love this style for these shorts as the narrators seem to be telling us the story and we see other actors almost pantomiming the situations as he explained it.

There was not much of a cast behind him though. Only a young boy named Asa Jennings who played the main character, Peter Watson. Peter was tormented by a pair of bullies who wound up killing a swan and strapping the wings to Peter, forcing him up a tree in an attempt to fly.

I was quite engaged with this story, which was fairly shocking to me. When they made poor Peter lay down on the train tracks as he was tied up, I was really rooting for these bullies to get there’s. Sadly, that did not happen, which left me a bit empty after the end of the short. It did feel like one of those darker endings that Roald Dahl was known for.

Three for three so far with these Wes Anderson shorts.

4 stars