The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson’s new film, The Phoenician Scheme, is a good mixture of techniques and skills he’s not only used recently, but early in his filmography, as well as some new tricks he’s got up his sleeves. Unlike the films he’s been putting out recently, this is a relatively straight forward narrative. Benecia Del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda, a wealthy businessman attempting to set up his large scaled “Phoenician Scheme” project. When he is plotted against by other parties, he has to go to each of his business partners and attempt to get them to pay more to cover ‘The Gap’ so it comes out of their pockets and not his. Along with him is Mia Threapleton as his daughter Liesl, who he wishes to inherit his large estate. While she is practicing to be a nun, she has not yet taken her vows and agrees to go along with him hoping she can persuade him to have more humanitarian business plannings, and to discover who actually murdered her mother. With her is Michael Cera’s Bjorn, who is the tutor of the estate, and the three travel by plane to the various different cities meeting the plethora of Korda’s business relatives as they attempt to get everyone to cover the gap.
People who are familiar with Anderson’s filmography will recognize the trademark qualities of his film style. His yellow tone, changing aspect ratios, witty yet dry dialogue, and ridiculous props he uses as set pieces, in this case its shoe boxes, are a staple. And yet, this refreshing return to a more linear story harkens back to films like Life Aquatic and Moonrise Kingdom. This is one of his funniest movies to date. Anderson is now utilizing a type of physical and destructive comedy he hasn’t tapped into before. But beneath the surface, this film does have a lot of subtext. He’s interested in religion, in politics, in the kind of lifestyle the rich have, and maybe even most interestingly, the concept of getting older and the lack of nostalgia one might feel if they lived a particular lifestyle.
As always, Anderson picks a wide cast that provides an immense amount of entertainment to the film. My personal favorite pair are Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as the Stanford boys that play the most ridiculous game of Horse I’ve ever seen. Benedict Cumberbatch as Uncle Nubar is delightfully outrageous in the last act of the film, and I hope he’s included in many more Anderson films in the future doing precisely whatever this zany performance was. Cera as Bjorn is a true pleasure, and while the pair have known each other for a while, it’s taken this long for Cera to appear in one of Anderson’s films. Here’s to hoping his special kind of reserved oddity can be found in future Anderson films.
Is this Anderson’s best film? No. But is it a true delight at the cinema, absolutely. I hope he continues to lean into his craziness, into his distinct colorization, into more focused and odd props that become the outlines of his entire stories. As each year passes his films become more and more gorgeous, and the things he’s tackling more and more introspective, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.