Kimber Myers
By its nature, precision on screen can seem stuffy or dull. A filmmaker following the rules — even the ones they’ve set for themselves — could lead to a resulting film that feels by-the-numbers or coldly rigid. With The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson is, well, Wes Anderson, adhering as closely as ever to what the audience expects from the fastidious filmmaker: meticulously crafted production design in composed shots, expansive casts of familiar faces playing quirky characters, and an abundance of father issues. He’s playing within the strict structures he’s established through decades of films, but the key word there is “playing.” What we get is his funniest film since The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but it also is his most insubstantial feature in years, despite dealing with the heavy themes of ethics and legacy.
The Phoenician Scheme begins with a burst of violence that initially feels out of character for a Wes Anderson film, but it’s done in such a cartoonish way that the gore fits in his wonderfully absurd universe. It’s 1950 in the High Balkan Flatlands, and the fictional setting has the vague European air of an unnamed — or nonexistent — country, contrasting with the dry American atmosphere of Asteroid City and heady Gallic fumes of The French Dispatch. One of the richest men in Europe, Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), has just survived his sixth plane crash, though not everyone on board is so lucky. As Korda has amassed all that wealth, he has amassed more than a few enemies as well, pointing toward an assassination attempt rather than an aviation accident.
In examining his life, he realizes that he doesn’t want to leave his riches to his eight mischievous sons, but instead to his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton). Her training as a nun — and general moral character — has created a rift between the novitiate and her father, whose business practices could be considered underhanded at best and reprehensible at worst. As he attempts to reconnect with her, he brings Liesl along as he works to secure financing from a variety of sources for an ambitious land development, the titular Phoenician Scheme. The word “scheme” is used in the British sense, describing a plan, but given Korda’s dubious character, it implies his unscrupulous intentions too.
Those potential backers fill out the sprawling ensemble we’ve come to expect from Anderson’s work, with appearances from Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Scarlett Johansson as Korda visits each of their characters in turn to reach his monetary goal. Meanwhile, Michael Cera gets the most screen time after the two leads. While he’s not generally known for his range, he gets to stretch a bit here with an accent as the awkward Norwegian tutor who accompanies Korda and Liesl in their efforts to get money. Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, Rupert Friend, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Richard Ayodade also show up, but the focus remains on Del Toro’s Korda and Threapleton’s Liesl, as they both evolve from bad dad and nun-in-training to somewhere in the middle of their polar opposites.
Amidst the father-daughter relationship, assassination attempts, and business chatter, there are running jokes about hand grenades and hard liquor, and the Anderson-scripted dialogue is delivered dry as a bone and fast as a sprint. It’s goofy and silly in marvelous ways, leaving the audience a bit dizzy and without much to cling to. The Phoenician Scheme is a whiz-bang wonder, and while it’s very much mid-tier Anderson, it’s still Anderson. The care he puts into every frame makes it a joy to watch, if you care about shot composition and mise en scène. Non-fans will remain baffled as ever.
However, for those who have fallen for him as a filmmaker, his latest has plenty of familiar charms to keep you beguiled, with enough differentiators to keep you interested — at least while it’s on acreen. All that breeziness means it threatens to blow away with the slightest gust of wind. The Phoenician Scheme is ultimately about what we leave behind, but the movie itself leaves the audience with less of an impression than most of Anderson’s work to date.
B
“The Phoenician Scheme” is out this weekend in limited release.
