In all the harping over Wes Anderson that one can partake in (the archness of tone, the privilege of his characters, the artificiality of his settings), one thing that can never really be denied is that all his films are consistently very funny. His films are so often touched by the melancholy of his protagonists, that many forget that you spend a good amount of the runtime laughing at their emotional absurdity. The Phoenician Scheme is a perfect example of this. The film’s plot is so tangled as to be indecipherable, and it’s led by a character whose ethical compass is so compromised that one struggles to find something even relatable, let alone likable. How do you make a film like this compelling? You keep the laughs consistent and the pacing precise, and once people settle in, the substance comes through. The Wes Anderson mission statement.
There are too many Wes Anderson movies that have been vastly improved by subsequent viewings for me to confidently express that The Phoenician Scheme is “good, not great”. Especially since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, his films have had a playfulness that begs not to be taken seriously. Of course, that’s always contradicted by the moment in every Anderson picture where things get very, very serious. In this way, Scheme is typical. Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-zsa Korda, a shrewd businessman whose talent for weaseling into the deals of others and escape with his own profit has gained him a powerful reputation and a long list of enemies. Attempts on his life happen pretty regularly, including in the opening of the film where his plane is mechanically sabotaged, crash lands in a corn field, and he’s declared dead.
He’s not dead, actually, but it’s his closest brush yet, and that has made him consider the limits of his own mortality. This inspires him to reach out to his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a young nun weeks away from taking her final vows. Liesl is skeptical of her father’s summons, but agrees to meet him part out of curiosity and part to express her frustrations to his face. It’s Zsa-zsa’s wish to make Liesl the sole heir to his estate, eschewing his nine young sons in the process. Liesl agrees on a trial basis – if Zsa-zsa can prove himself to be a capable father, then she will accept his gesture. He asks her to assist him in completing his latest business venture which includes influencing the infrastructure of faraway Phoenicia. After governmental authorities (led by Rupert Friend) conspire to fix prices on needed materials, Zsa-zsa and Liesl must visit individual investors to convince them to cover a larger portion of the investment. Easier said than done.
Among the investors is a member of the Phoenician royal family (Riz Ahmed), two older, basketball-savvy construction conglomerates (Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks), a French nightclub owner (Mathieu Amalric), a fast-talking American millionaire (Jeffrey Wright), a German cousin (Scarlett Johansson), and a sinister man named Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), who also happens to be Zsa-zsa’s half-brother and the possible murderer of Liesl’s mother. Along the way, they are often confronted by Sergio (Richard Ayoade), a radical freedom fighter who objects to expected use of slave labor to perform the Phoenician deal. Zsa-zsa and Liesl are joined by an impish entomologist named Bjørn (Michael Cera), who quickly and unabashedly confesses feelings for Liesl. Originally hired to tutor Zsa-zsa and his sons on bugs, Bjørn quickly turns into Zsa-zsa’s administrative assistant after his previous one suddenly (hilariously) dies in the film’s opening assassination attempt.
An unlikable father figure looking to save his life and his soul in the form of an ill-fitting child is pure Wes, almost self-parody. Royal Tenenbaum, Steve Zissou, Gustave H. This was the building block of Anderson’s storytelling for a while until it wasn’t. This back-to-basics approach to the script (written by Anderson, but a story credit is given to his frequent collaborator, Roman Coppola) belies the extreme complication put into the “scheme” that the title refers to, but you can see a return to comfort in the bitter repartee between Zsa-zsa and Liesl. Despite a resume that includes illicit arms dealing and war profiteering, there’s an implication that – in the long-overdue courting of his daughter’s acceptance – Zsa-zsa isn’t really that much of a bad guy after all, and just needs to accept his own familial responsibilities in order to be made whole again.
This is the soft spot inside the Wes Anderson canon where critics love to feast. Is curing the trauma of emotional absenteeism really all that simple? It is and it isn’t, and also, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. If anything, The Phoenician Scheme is the victim of being Anderson’s first theatrical release since 2023’s Asteroid City, a film that ranks amongst his most cinematically mature and emotionally illuminating. Asteroid City is, among other things, about the hermetic nature of Anderson’s filmmaking style and how he uses it to repair his own emotional wounds in increasingly complicated ways. When you’re a filmmaker known for his layers of artificiality, and you choose to expose yourself in that way, I can understand watching The Phoenician Scheme and being disappointed that he’s put it all back in the box.
But I’m not certain that’s what he’s actually done. Throughout the film, Zsa-zsa’s frequent near-death experiences cause him to imagine himself approaching the gates of the afterlife. These sequences – shot in black & white, with cheeky allusions to the Powell & Pressburger classic A Matter of Life and Death – deepen his previously careless relationship with mortality, and influence his need to reconnect with the spirituality of Liesl. There’s a salvation that Zsa-zsa desperately needs, and Liesl is the only one that can give it to him. This differs from the archaic narcissism of Tenenbaum, or the emotional obtuseness of Zissou. Del Toro, an actor who’s always refused the characterization that can plague so many latinx performers, again makes Zsa-zsa his own, dipping into his own bag of eccentricities to create a fascinating, contradictory character.
Which leads me back to my original point: The Phoenician Scheme is so remarkably funny. Del Toro is in pole position here, getting the best material throughout, but Threapleton and Cera keep up with his furious pace. It’s become almost a joke how large the ensembles have gotten within Wes Anderson’s latest films. Phoenician Scheme‘s scroll of world famous actors feels almost modest compared to Asteroid City or The French Dispatch, but the performances are aplenty. Including all the names mentioned earlier, Hope Davis arrives in the film’s third act as a mother superior who may be more influenced by material things than she maybe should be. It’s one of several small performances throughout that are total comedic home runs. Also, in the Bill Murray emeritus era, this may be the funniest stunt use of the comedy legend Wes has ever produced.
No matter how silly an Anderson film is, we always expect the moment near the end where the vulnerability reveals itself, and the layers of mordant humor get peeled away to reveal the ache behind all of the characters’ dastardly ways. If Wes is often accused of putting his finger on the scale in these moments, you certainly can’t make the case for that here. You can argue that the film’s resolution feels over-simple, especially following all of the mania that has preceded it. But the movie is imminently enjoyable, especially for those (like me) who have always found comfort in Anderson’s manipulated worlds. Like it or not, Wes Anderson is one of the most successful auteurs of contemporary cinema; an artist who has never appeared to alter his vision in any way, let alone compromise it. The Phoenician Scheme lives up to that level of distinction.
Directed by Wes Anderson