Written and directed by Wes Anderson
I’ve often wondered at Anderson’s prolific output, which counts three features, four shorts, a music video, and two ads in this decade alone. His movies feel so detailed and intricate, labor-intensive things, so for him to turn them out at this pace, dreaming up new stories, locations, and characters, always struck me as impressive.
The Phoenician Scheme presented a possible explanation to me, for the turnaround time on his latest feature at least: There’s a Word-file on Anderson’s desktop titled Template and it looks something like this.
Title: The Royal Tenenbaums The Phoenician Scheme
Summary: An enigmatic, domineering, but estranged father tries to reconnect with his children child through an elaborate ploy business venture during which he reconsiders his ways, changes for the better, and applies his considerable talents in service of others.
This appears a shrewd move: The Royal Tenenbaums is one of the great movies of this century, a movie that burnished a firebrand style with a witty but devastating story of familial reconciliation. Yet, the panache and punch goes missing here, and while the Wes Anderson experience is intact, there’s only a lackluster actual moviegoing experience to be found. Things are wearing thin. The royal purple of Tenenbaums is now lavender – at best.
Benicio Del Toro is Zsa Zsa Korda, industrialist and all-powerful man. He bullies governments, dupes entire countries, schemes, builds, and does what he wants, always profiting. The world’s bureaucrats don’t like that so they plot his downfall, and sensing the coming storm, Zsa Zsa summons his estranged daughter Liesli, soon to be a nun, to enlist her in his most ambitious venture yet as his right-hand woman and potential heir should the pests of government undo him before his vision is realized.
Zsa Zsa is Anderson’s attempt at an Ayn Randian figure, a larger-than-life shaker/doer set upon by the small people. He has no passport, no nationality. I don’t need human rights, he tells his incredulous daughter. Del Toro is a bear of a man, and Alexandre Desplat’s score for him and his scheme is that of an oncoming freight train. It’s an excellent performance, almost enough to carry The Phoenician Scheme, but he’s hauling empty train cars for the most part.
Actors seem to treat a Wes Anderson movie like a bucket list item, eager to get on the cast list. Despite Anderson often returning to his stalwarts, any new go-around tends to have one or two sparkling new names, and as was the case in The French Dispatch, the star-studded casting sometimes doesn’t add a whole lot. In The Phoenician Scheme, it’s a mixed bag.
Michael Cera as Bjorn, an entomologist-turned-assistant to Zsa Zsa, is a revelation, his admission to the Anderson universe one of those unions you’re surprised didn’t happen before. His Norwegian accent is the stuff of exaggerated caricature for effect, but his ability for depicting wide-eyed innocence and knack for comedic timing makes you want to retroactively cast him in Anderson’s other films.
Mia Threapleton is another new face as Liesl, Zsa Zsa’s only daughter turned nun and now sole heir (on a trial basis). There’s a struggle to get into rhythm: Threapleton staples on a sardonic deadpan meant to mimic her father’s gruff facade, and this mask stays on no matter what life throws at her.
Some of this is down to directing, but even if Anderson’s style of writing and directing of his actors is rigid, the best actors still evoke the ebb and flow of a real person beneath it all. Threapleton skates across a frozen lake in a straight line.
The Phoenician Scheme is Anderson wearing thin. The overly familiar themes get no less so, and you’d have to be an acolyte to find genuine new joy in another helping of Anderson’s signature visual style, which is still as well decorated and arranged as ever. He clearly has something to show us, but is there much more he wants to say?
Scheme is a careful toe in the pool of political discourse, with this story of a man who wants simply more at any cost and isn’t afraid to crush people underfoot, but it’s a crude, childish imitation at critique, an intellectual crayon drawing submitted as political caricature. The father-child dynamic is a safety blanket in this regard for the movie to fall back upon, a source of comfort that’s looking worn out this time around.
Mikkel Frederiksen 