Now available in their entirety on Netflix, these four short films by acclaimed American director Wes Anderson are based on the short stories of British writer Roald Dahl (1916-1990), and amount to far more than a simple facsimile of the tales. Together, they form a coherent whole, lasting about the length of a feature film altogether. As abstracts, they function as small fiction laboratories. Each in its own way lifts the lid on the filmmaker's factory, showing how his model-making style, often described as reminiscent of dolls' houses, has much more in common with the theater of trestles and machines.

Each short is introduced by Ralph Fiennes, playing the writer sitting in his work chair, wearing carpet slippers and holding a pencil. The longest of the stories opens the anthology: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, in which a wealthy idler develops a method of seeing with his eyes closed after discovering a dark pamphlet, the biography of an Indian circus phenomenon who learned this skill from a yogi in the forest.

The Swan describes the ordeal of a bird-loving child who is bullied by two idiotic hunters, while The Ratcatcher tells the tale of a rat hunter who identifies with the rodents he exterminates. Last but not least, Poison, an oppressive tale of anguish, depicts a man lying trapped on his bed by a snake that has found its way under his pyjama top. In keeping with the filmmaker's customary five-star ensembles, the stories star Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade and Dev Patel.

The strength of these stories lies first and foremost in the extraordinary way they have been condensed. Anderson imposes a single viewpoint, similar to that of a theater stage. Within it, the action speeds along with the use of sliding sets, painted canvases, pantomimes, puppets and visible artifice – all of which are the tools of handcrafted illusionism. The constraint may seem rigid, but it produces a wealth of visual discoveries: an X-rayed body whose throbbing entrails are revealed; a corner of the countryside dug out like a trench in a haystack; a stop-motion animated rat; a miniature train suggesting the distant horizon... The aesthetics allow all dimensions of space to be compressed into a single shot, near and far, up and down.

But the greatest achievement of this ensemble is still its storytelling. Anderson doesn't just adapt Dahl, he makes a point of letting the prose itself be heard. Facing the camera, gazing into the viewer's eyes, the actors aren't just throwing lines at each other, they are taking it in turns to speak the words of the short story. Each becomes the narrator of his or her own character, juggling direct and indirect speech to the point of vertigo. The impeccable phrasing combines a delight in words at a disheveled rate of speech. Far from being disembodied, these games accentuate the diffuse wonder of Dahl's imagination, with its disquieting underpinnings and subtle irony.

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