‘The Phoenician Scheme' movie review: Wes Anderson on autopilot
Wes Anderson has always made beautiful cinematic snow globes, immune to external messiness. Minutes into his latest (and perhaps most terminally fussy) confection, it's clear this isn't top-shelf Anderson. It might not even be bottom-shelf. It's as if he's shredded his greatest hits and glued them back together with unchecked indulgence.
Set in a fictional 1950s Middle Eastern country that resembles a Suez-era Cairo, The Phoenician Scheme follows the billionaire arms dealer and infrastructure savior Anatole 'Zsa-Zsa' Korda (Benicio Del Toro) as he attempts to outmaneuver a death plot, reconcile with the nun-daughter he abandoned in a convent, and bankroll a mega-project across a desert. The plan involves dubious shoeboxes, various foreign dignitaries, and divine intervention. At one point, Bill Murray appears as God. It is not as delightful as it sounds.
The Phoenician Scheme (English)
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, and too many more of the 'Anderson Ensemble' to name
Runtime: 105 minutes
Storyline: A wealthy businessman appoints his only daughter as sole heir to his estate and embarks on an adventure to secure the future of his empire
In theory, this angsty, Tintin-like adventure should be a riotous romp, but in practice, I found myself trapped for nearly two hours inside a ledger with fancy illustrations. There are pages upon pages of immaculately calligraphed industrial espionage and entomological trivia that's all underscored by a steady drip of aesthetic self-congratulation.
Anderson's compositions have never been more elaborate, and that in itself is saying something. Each shot is like a diorama designed by an obsessive. We glimpse Renoir paintings, hand-drawn logbooks, fruit-themed grenades — everything, save for any semblance of emotional investment, is in perfect alignment. For all the ornamentation, The Phoenician Scheme is curiously barren.
Del Toro's Korda is of mythic contradiction. He's a titan of industry, a crumbling patriarch, a possible murderer, and a man with nine adopted sons housed like rare collectibles in his palazzo. Del Toro plays him laconically, but it's far too taciturn a role to work. Newcomer Mia Threapleton, as Liesl, the nun-daughter dragged back into daddy's dealings, also attempts to inject vinegar into the script's saccharine rhythms, but their emotional arc falls frustratingly flat.
The evergreen Michael Cera, however, is the unsurprising balm. As Bjorn, a soft-spoken Norwegian tutor-slash-secretary-slash-American spy-slash-exposition vehicle, Cera offers a twitchy earnestness and an adorable accent that cuts through the stylistic fog.
The rest of the cast — Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mathieu Amalric — float in and out of the frames. What was once the charming idea of the 'Anderson Ensemble' has curdled into a parade of cameos, each trotting out banter like it's on a metronome. Pace is not the same as momentum, and quirk is not the same as character. These are truths Anderson seems increasingly unwilling, or unable, to accept.
The Phoenician Scheme is not without its moments of wit, for it's hard to imagine any Anderson film entirely bereft of charm. But its pleasures are abstract and academic, the kind that encourages YouTube frame-freezing video essays and production design dissertations more than anything else. There are ghosts of better Anderson films haunting its hallways but none of them fully materialise.
At its best, Anderson's cinema has always conjured the eccentricities and nostalgia of childhood recollected in tranquility. But The Phoenician Scheme feels nothing more than a proud auteur rifling through his own legacy in search of novelty.
It's a 'monumental' work by Anderson, in the sense that it's a very, very boring edifice of lavish masonry. Its craftsmanship may impress on a second viewing, assuming you survive the first. Myself, I feel very safe.
The Phoenician Scheme is currently running in theatres
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