Poison movie review: Wes Anderson bulldozes British occupation of India in thrilling final chapter of Netflix quartet

Benedict Cumberbatch plays an Englishman named Harry Pope, who is discovered one evening in his colonial-era bungalow in India, lying absolutely still on his bed, visibly stressed out. The man who walks in on him in this odd situation is called Timber Woods; he’s played by Dev Patel. In an urgent whisper, Harry tells Timber that a snake has fallen asleep on his stomach under the sheets, and that he cannot move for fear of waking it up and being bitten. The snake, he says, is a ‘krait’, whose poison could kill a man in three minutes flat unless he is immediately administered a dose of anti-venom.

Harry instructs Timber to summon Dr Ganderbai (Ben Kingsley), who rushes over and begins formulating a blueprint for a rescue mission. Dr Ganderbai’s plan essentially involves drenching Harry’s sheets with chloroform, hoping that it knocks the snake out, and yanking Harry away from the bed. Like the second and third films — The Swan and The Rat Catcher — Poison is also around 15 minutes long, and filled with an almost equal amount of dread.

Anderson injects a breakneck pace into the proceedings as Timber and Dr Ganderbai work quickly to save Harry, who speaks in hoarse whispers throughout. He begins to crack as the minutes go by, snapping at Dr Ganderbai to hurry up. But as viewers sympathetic to his predicament, we excuse him almost immediately. This is Anderson weaponising his famously disarming aesthetic; by allowing the viewer to care for Harry, he sets up a shock reveal that wouldn’t have been as effective had we not been bothered about whether Harry lives or dies.

Just as sneakily, he gets us to root for Timber and Dr Ganderbai, who seem to be genuinely concerned for Harry’s safety. After soaking the sheets in chloroform, Dr Ganderbai begins to pull them down very cautiously. There’s pin-drop silence. It would not be fair to discuss this film without revealing what happens next, so consider this your spoiler warning. But when Dr Ganderbai pulls at the soaked sheets, he discovers along with the rest of us that there is no snake in the bed at all.

He innocently asks Harry if he might have been mistaken about the snake all along. Anderson’s otherwise meticulous framing begins to crack, and he switches to a handheld style — this is about as surprising as James Cameron deciding to direct only Bhojpuri movies going forward. Harry looks livid at the very suggestion, and begins spewing the most hateful slurs at the good doctor, revealing himself to be a racist monster.

The title, once again, says it all. It also captures the parallels that Anderson so clearly wants to draw between Henry Sugar and Poison. Not only do both movies share the same three cast members, they’re also set in India. A lifelong admirer of our country — Anderson owes a great debt to Satyajit Ray — he presents the colonial era very differently in these two movies. In Henry Sugar, India is an almost magical place, filled with mystical yogis and old men with superpowers. But in Poison, the fear is more palpable. In both films, Kingsley — an honorary Indian whose birth name is literally Krishna — plays do-gooders who influence the characters played by Cumberbatch in opposing ways. While the titular Henry Sugar is inspired to embrace altruism by Kingsley’s Imdad Khan, Harry spews poison at Dr Ganderbai in response to his kindness here.

These four Netflix shorts are essentially a tasting menu that begins with dessert and ends with the bitter truth. They also serve a perfect entry point into Anderson’s storied filmography for audiences that haven’t yet sampled his work. Viewed collectively, the quartet might be the most personal expression of a filmmaker’s politics and personality this year.

Poison
Director – Wes Anderson
Cast – Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley
Rating – 5/5