Thank the Phoenicians
One reason the release of every Wes Anderson film is an exciting occurrence is because you can reliably count on him to push his aesthetics or storytelling in some bold new direction. Despite persistent accusations that Anderson fossilized around Zissou, endlessly riffing on the same visual quirks and narrative obsessions, the truth is exactly the opposite. With each new outing, Anderson has exploded his meditations on life, death, and human nature into ever more intricate expressions, sharpening his already planimetric mise-en-scènes into near-baroque levels of lively artifice. He remains defiantly uncompromising, and never dull.
The only arguable exceptions to Anderson’s pattern of presenting a bold new frontier with each release are The Darjeeling Limited and now, The Phoenician Scheme. Not that either of these films is even remotely unsatisfactory. I’m extremely fond of both. But they feel a little safer and less bold within their place in Anderson’s arc than most of his other films. Yet, even that take doesn’t quite hold up under scrutiny, because both Darjeeling and Phoenician deliver plenty of subtle innovations; they’re just quieter, less obvious breakthroughs.
The easy read on The Phoenician Scheme is that it’s Anderson back in familiar territory: a family-centric adventure reminiscent of his first five films. Its narrative is linear and direct, almost schematic; indeed, the opening act literally places before us a series of “boxes” that represent the forthcoming episodes the characters will participate in. And, like many of Anderson’s earlier films, almost all of those before The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014, it revolves primarily around navigating or repairing the strained bonds between a parent and child.
But the easy read feels reductive. To me, The Phoenician Scheme is more in conversation with the introspective Asteroid City than to the familial angst of The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, despite obvious narrative parallels to the latter. Like Asteroid City and sections of The French Dispatch, this film is Anderson confronting his own life’s work and purpose, albeit more obliquely (and humorously — this is Anderson’s funniest work in years, maybe ever). When Anderson makes movies about his own filmmaking, it’s not just navel-gazing. Instead, his look at his own process serves as synecdoche for a reflection on deeper truths of storytelling itself: how narratives give shape to our experiences and allow us to connect meaningfully with the world around us, allow us to confront unknowable truths like mortality and suffering.
Specifically, The Phoenician Scheme grapples with legacy — what happens to our creations after we pass, the reasons and methods by which we pass down something meaningful to the next generation, and how we might ultimately be judged by our contributions. Throughout the film, the characters wrestle with how to “fill The Gap,” a phrase carrying both literal plot resonance and symbolic heft. Notably, for the first time in his family dramas, Anderson’s perspective aligns more clearly with the elderly parent rather than the younger adult grappling with inherited baggage.
The Phoenician Scheme’s plot is an espionage caper centered on Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), a notorious billionaire involved in international conspiracies. His brushes with death due to frequent plane crashes and his visions of the afterlife prompt him to reconnect with his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun-in-training. Korda ropes Liesl and the family’s tutor and assistant Bjørn (Michael Cera) into an ethically dubious scheme to fund an infrastructure of a fictional country called Phoenicia using slave labor and extorted capital. Predictably, global powers, rival investors, and a steady stream of would-be assassins conspire against him. He and Liesl race to “fill the Gap” in funds to complete their mysterious infrastructure project as US agents their entire means to slow down (or eliminate) Zsa-Zsa.
Despite frequent allusions to heaven and judgment (even featuring Bill Murray as God Himself) The Phoenician Scheme actually feels less existential and spiritually probing than Asteroid City, in which dreams and aliens and stories are vessels to the great beyond. Here, religion acts more as a practical morality gauge than a mystical portal to the unknown; this film suggests our true worth is shaped less by a relationship with a creator than by how we treat one another and impact the tangible world.
Anderson crafted this story to honor his late father-in-law, Lebanese engineer Fouad Malouf, yet the director clearly found his own deeply personal entry point. Zsa-Zsa’s elaborate and controversial Phoenician enterprise, repeatedly sabotaged by covert U.S. government intervention, feels like Anderson speaking through his own idiosyncratic lens about the struggle of maintaining an uncompromising creative vision in hostile Hollywood. It’s tragic that Anderson continues to frame his creative identity as something perpetually besieged and misunderstood, a theme recurrently bubbling beneath his whimsical surfaces, especially in recent years.
The cast is uniformly excellent, each actor locked into Anderson’s precise comedic and dramatic rhythm. Del Toro is nothing short of extraordinary, embodying Korda’s ruthless charisma with both humor and an aching melancholy. Meanwhile, Cera proves himself a natural Anderson muse, bringing his terrific comic timing and dorky persona to Bjørn’s mild-mannered absurdities. Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s daughter, delivers a wonderful performance as Liesl. It evokes the iconic, low-key Gwyneth Paltrow turn in The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s a delight to watch Threapleton navigate Liesl slipping into her father’s cutthroat universe. I’ll be curious to see if her career takes off from here, as this is her biggest credit to date.
As with any Anderson project, even the smaller roles are filled with wonderful turns from Anderson’s reliable and ever-growing stable of character actors, plus some fresh Anderson faces. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston make a hysterically cranky pair of investors who settle business disputes with rounds of Horse, while Benedict Cumberbatch’s late-film appearance as villainous Uncle Nubar leans into his cartoonishly expressive physicality. Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and F. Murray Abraham, along with Murray, pop up memorably as afterlife entities, once again affirming Anderson’s penchant for casting world-class actors in even the most fleeting supporting roles.
From a formal perspective, The Phoenician Scheme slots comfortably into Anderson’s established visual style, with one major behind-the-scenes shift: cinematographer Robert Yeoman, who shot every live-action Anderson project to date, has stepped aside, replaced here by Bruno Delbonnel. Delbonnel mostly delivers a respectful Yeoman imitation, yet subtle but noticeable differences emerge: the lighting is a bit softer, the color grading is punchier and darker, the textures just a touch grittier, the focus of shots less intuitive. Anderson leans even more heavily than normal on his trademark panning shots, more often than not swiveling precisely 90 degrees. He also throws a few uncharacteristic moments throughout — memorably a top-down credits shot so striking it became the poster, and an especially an alien-feeling handheld shot during the climax. Still, this remains unmistakably an Anderson film.
(I haven’t seen any sourced reporting on exactly why Anderson is working with Delbonnel rather than Yeoman this time around, though multiple rumors online cited Yeoman burning out on Anderson’s ridiculsouly prolific output in recent years.)
Alexandre Desplat, Anderson’s musical muse for many films now, again provides the score, and once more the results are superb. Desplat’s tone perfectly matches Anderson — whimsical and colorful on the surface, but melancholic in mood. It’s easily one of the best scores of the year so far, second only to Ludwig Göransson’s stirring work on Sinners in my ranking, and another confirmation that Anderson and Desplat remain one of cinema’s greatest contemporary partnerships.
Even if it’s a hair safer and more narratively simple than Anderson’s most audacious works, we should never take a master operating at peak powers for granted. Anderson’s signature deadpan barely covering a bleeding heart and wounds of lost time remains eternally satisfying. That The Phoenician Scheme ranks closer to the median rather than the very top of Anderson’s filmography is no slight; it’s simply a reflection of how consistently visionary Anderson is, how powerful his filmmaking has remained for over 25 years. He has a style unmistakably his own, a clear voice with meaningful things to say, and I will rejoice in every opportunity to see him create.
Is It Good?
Exceptionally Good (7/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.