© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush We already know Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl are a match made in Heaven.
Anderson's 2009 stop-motion animation of Dahl's 'The Fantastic Mr Fox' with George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Michael Gambon perfectly captured the Norwegian Welsh writer's flair for the macabre.
But it also benefitted hugely from Anderson's quirky, tongue in cheek sense of humour.
So the thought of Anderson developing four Dahl short stories for Netflix as short films seems heartening.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush With the exception possibly of Tim Burton, is there another filmmaker whose style seems so well suited to Dahl's work?
Not really. So it's good to see him adapting the material with such glee.
Anderson's 14 minute adaptation of Dahl's 'The Swan' brings to the screen a short story that featured in the author's 1977 collection of tales, 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More'.
It adopts the same big budget 'Jackanory' approach that Netflix viewers will have seen first in the Texan director's 41 minute adaptation of 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' for the streamer.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush On this occasion, the narration is shared by Ralph Fiennes' Dahl and Rupert Friend's adult version of Asa Jennings' bullied bird enthusiast, Peter Watson who shoulders the bulk of the work.
Anderson's version of Dahl's story is simple.
Set during Peter's childhood, he recounts how one day he spied a green woodpecker through binoculars when he had the misfortune of coming across his school bullies, Ernie and Raymond.
Ernie has been given a rifle for his birthday and is armed with a box of bullets.
He has just been on a shooting rampage through the countryside with Raymond - mowing down loads of small birds.
Stumbling across Peter, he takes the opportunity to bully him outside of class and orders him to stick his hands up.
Forcing Peter at gunpoint to accompany him and Raymond, he takes him to railway tracks with the intent of putting him in danger.
He also tries to hurt the boy by watching them target birds.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush But then an extraordinary event takes place that catches Ernie and Raymond by surprise.
That's probably about as much as I can go in terms of a synopsis of Anderson's short but it's safe to say, 'The Swan' is a magical realism tale about a boy rising above the petty taunting of his tormentors.
This being Anderson, the story is not conventionally told.
Much of the action is imparted through the adult Peter's narration, with no-one actually depicting Eddie or Raymond onscreen.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush Eliel Ford, Truman Hanks, Benoit Herlan and Octavia Tapia's stagehands occasionally surface during the film as he conveys the story.
They dart in and out of frame to take props out of the hands of Jennings' child version of Peter.
And just like 'The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar,' the narrator finds ways of moving from location to location while he tells his tale.
Fiennes' Dahl surfaces towards the end of the short film to wind up the story.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush However Friend comfortably narrates the bulk of the tale, directly addressing the audience while Jennings helps him depict some of the scenes.
Production Designer Adam Stockhausen and art director Claire Peerless are given a much smaller canvas to work with in this short, with Anderson effectively boxing the action into a maze.
Even though the sets are minimalistic, Anderson is able to keep the audience hanging on every word of Friend's narration because of the terror and brutality relayed in the tale.
Forcing his audience to imagine Peter's childhood bullies, the director uses the narration, props and occasional animation to make us conjure up our own images of the kind of thugs that Eddie and Raymond are.
© Netflix & Indian Paintbrush As a result, we are rather unusually gripped not just by what is unfolding onscreen but what we imagine ought to be up there.
It is a neat trick by Anderson - aided and abetted by Roman Coppola's boxed-in and rigid cinematography.
But it's a trick that you could only get away with in a short film like this.
Anderson and his collaborators pull the trick off splendidly in 'The Swan'.
And while ultimately 'The Swan' is not as visually dazzling as the other short films in his Netflix Ronald Dahl short story collection, it is still remarkably a triumph of visual storytelling.
('The Swan' was made available for streaming on Netflix on September 28, 2023)
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