The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson's most spiritual, if slightly scattered, film. It's a work built around a story simultaneously intricate and incidental, profound and perfunctory, while remaining as visually enrapturing as ever. However, where his magnificent Asteroid City created some of his most marvelous and moving moments to date, this film is more preoccupied with the mechanics of getting to the next scene. It does so in an often wandering fashion that could easily prove tough going for even the most devout Anderson acolytes, but still finds a more earned impact in how it ultimately brings everything together.
Much of this comes down to how it benefits greatly from a bittersweet turn by Benicio del Toro and a terrific introduction to relative newcomer Mia Threapleton, though there is also a richness to Anderson's latest that helps it rise above the rather ho-hum depths it often falls into. This falling begins in literal fashion as an attempt is made on the life of the wealthy industrialist Anatole "Zsa Zsa" Korda (del Toro), sending his lovingly crafted lo-fi plane falling from the sky toward what seems to be certain death. Miraculously, he survives and wanders out from the wreckage of the attack with guts in hand. It's a sublime though bloody introduction for Anderson, with one of the other unlucky people on the plane getting blown to pieces, marking the beginning of the film's reflections on the idea of death and legacy that will change Zsa Zsa.
Specifically, after seeing a black and white vision of heaven, he'll try to turn over his wealth to his daughter Liesl (Threapleton) by naming her his sole heir even though he hasn't seen her in years... and she is now a nun... and he has nine other sons he could cut in on the fortune (none of whom he trusts). He also sets out to build an immense infrastructure project (this is the titular scheme), though he will have to overcome more assassination attempts and sabotage from all angles (while reconnecting with his daughter along the way). Oh, and the endlessly goofy tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera, in rare form) tags along for all of this for mysterious reasons. The plot's machinations are a lot to sort through, but they also aren't what's most important.
No, what's most central to this film is family. Though not rising to the same heights, The Phoenician Scheme is most akin to The Royal Tenenbaums (still Anderson's best film) in how it's about a father desperately attempting to make a last-ditch effort to reconnect with his child. It's this element that is the strongest part of his latest, as it never once sands down how frequently painful this can be and how generally awful Zsa Zsa is. He makes Royal Tenenbaum look like Father of the Year and has a much longer road to earning back the trust of Liesl, who is a deadpan delight with every sharp look Threapleton gives. The scenes she has with del Toro alone — rather than the ones featuring many faces old and new that speed by — are where the film increasingly grabs you.
Many other moments the film feels like it's slipping through Anderson's fingers. Namely, everything in the scheme feels oddly more like box-checking than it does truly charming whimsy. Much of this is the point, as this culminates in the film making clear this was just a distraction from the choice between wealth and love that Zsa Zsa will eventually have to make. That Anderson dedicates the film to his late father-in-law Fouad Malouf gives a sense of what he was most interested in grappling with here. He eventually even crafts a gentle rejection of the craven capitalist mindset of "who can lick who." Zsa Zsa believed he could "flatten" anyone who stood in his way, though the cost to his own soul was far greater than any profit he could ever make.
Even as Anderson gets too caught up in the clunky and more shallow pursuit of said profit, all this getting stripped away makes for a quietly emotional finale. One line, "I suppose I'm moved by this absurd performance," delivered by Jeffrey Wright (who steals the show just as he did in Asteroid City) encapsulates the experience perfectly. You aren't fully certain if The Phoencian Scheme is as successful as Anderson's best films, but you may just be moved all the same.
The Phoenician Scheme
Rated PG-13
Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera
