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Fridge / The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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  • Fridge Brilliance: The story of Imhrat Khan includes the strong implication that using his yogi powers selfishly led to his early death; he employed them in the service of making money and gaining fame. The story jokes about how Henry Sugar, in a normal story, would come to the same end, but then swerves, instead having him realize that No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction and set out to instead spend his life taking money from casinos and using it to found and fund orphanages and hospitals. However, Imhrat died after years of using his powers this way, while it only takes one night of winning for Henry to lose his attachment to material things and spend a lifetime not spending a cent of his vast wealth on himself, instead using it to help the poor and unfortunate. This suggests that The Powers That Be were ultimately satisfied with Henry's choice, and that Henry himself actually did find enlightenment as a result of his concentration rituals.
  • In the film, the person Sugar loved best in the world is himself, so he practices by concentrating on his own face. His makeup artist - who loved him in a nonspecific way - is also portrayed by Cumberbatch. You know, the guy who spent a great deal of time looking at Sugar's face.
  • In the book, Dahl's narration says its about actual events, not fiction, involves multiple nested narratives, and even explicitly defies genre convention at one point. In the film, the narration, fourth-wall breaking, and blatant theatricality - there's even a stagehand - serve similar meta purposes.

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