Review: The Phoenician Scheme – Auteur-ed states

Directed by Wes Anderson 
Starring Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks

6/10

After a near-death experience, one of many caused by numerous assassination attempts, wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) appoints his estranged daughter as his heir. However, the novitiate nun (Mia Threapleton) has her own concerns, as her amoral father enacts what could be his greatest legacy, The Phoenician Scheme: a project that could disrupt the established world order but would also make the Korda inordinately wealthy for generations.

By this stage you know what you’re getting with a Wes Anderson film, and The Phoenician Scheme highlights the best and worst aspects of the director. The visual presentation is front and centre, showing a beautiful eye and a bright colour palette. The setting is charmingly retro and lovingly staged. The stacked ensemble cast give quirky performances bordering on caricature but are saved by the strength of their performances. The narrative is oddly whimsical and almost nonexistent but buoyed by witty dialogue. The Phoenician Scheme is all of these, as if ticking off a director’s checklist.

As such, it is difficult to actually judge the quality of this film. Anderson has so honed his auteur vision that it almost achieves self-parody. Each shot is remarkably staged but often static, more a frame in a comic book than a fluid sequence in a film. It’s so distinctly Anderson that you automatically recognise it but at the same time feel you’ve seen it before.

In truth, you have.

This time the religious metaphor doesn’t quite land. If we’re being honest, despite the iconography, it’s more of a conversion to altruistic liberalism than a “come to Jesus” moment. Arguably, that’s the central thesis of the film, but it’s swamped by the surrealism of the characters and the narrative.

As for the titular scheme itself, it’s a nebulous McGuffin, a ruse to stage various meetings between outrageous characters, and to allow the father and daughter team to bond as they discover more about each other. The dialogue is off-kilter and amusing but seems to lack a universal appeal. Each joke seemed to land differently with the audience, producing a scattering of laughter from different segments.

The Phoenician Scheme is an average example of Anderson’s work. It has more universal appeal than his previous film, but in part that’s because it’s less ambitious. That’s not saying that this is a low-effort attempt by the director, but it is very “by the numbers.”

DAVID O’CONNELL