Some Thoughts on The Phoenician Scheme and Wes Anderson

The new Wes Anderson film, starring Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton, is here.

There is a reason that generative AI shills are obsessed with Wes Anderson. You cannot take even a casual browse around TikTok or Instagram without your feed being polluted with uncanny simulacrums of the filmmaker’s signature style, packaged into proudly incurious and SEO-friendly prompts like “What if Wes Anderson made Lord of the Rings?” There is this prevailing sense among the most cine-illiterate of us, the tech bros who are working overtime to destroy the creative industries, that great art can be easily replicated with minimal effort. Anderson, a filmmaker defined by his use of bold colours, impeccably framed shots, and deadpan screwball irony, is consistently positioned as someone whose work anyone can copy. Whenever I watch one of his works, I’m reminded that this is simply not the case. Only Wes Anderson can actually make a Wes Anderson movie.

(Image via Universal // Focus Features.)

In his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, a great scheme is afoot. Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) is a notorious businessman whose obscene wealth has been accrued through a series of monopolies, cons, and all-around nastiness. It's put him at odds with many people, including one mysterious force who keeps trying to assassinate him. After surviving the latest attempt on his life, Zsa-zsa appoints his only daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) to be his sole heir. Liesl, a nun in training, has no patience for her estranged father's amorality but finds herself caught up in his latest venture, a multi-pronged endeavour that requires multiple investors, a familial conspiracy, and avoiding the meddling of the US government.

It's a deliberately contrived plot whose details are less consequential than one would initially foresee. As with all great Anderson works, the drama is largely an excuse to give cameos to a slew of very game actors, from Jeffrey Wright and Richard Ayoade to Riz Ahmed and Bryan Cranston. Many Anderson players are here, if only for the briefest of scenes, like Willem Dafoe. Everyone is delivering their lines with that flat distanced tone that makes a joke sound as solemn as a sermon. But the jokes are still great, often darkly funny and blending classic screwball with ‘90s Gen-X irony. The standouts are Mia Threapleton (who sounds EXACTLY like her mother), Michael Cera (how has he not been in like six Anderson films already?), and Benedict Cumberbatch, who has the right kind of smarm to make this absurdity work (as well as a hilariously silly beard.)

A lot of Anderson sceptics accuse him of playing it safe, of sticking to his bag of tricks and spinning the wheels so that audiences are more dazzled by his well-manicured visuals than the heft of a sturdy narrative. I get those criticisms but largely disagree, especially in terms of Anderson’s later work where he’s frequently shown immense ambition in terms of plot and theme. The Grand Budapest Hotel, still his magnum opus, is his most political work without losing its deft touch. Asteroid City was like a Russian doll of narrative, blending stories within stories and finding space to examine what it even means to tell a tale. I was less enamoured with The French Dispatch (except for Jeffrey Wright’s scenes) but was still taken with Anderson’s earnest ode to physical media and the importance of well-funded journalism.

There are elements of intrigue amid The Phoenician Scheme’s take on the pillars of world power and the conspiratorial nature of shady men pulling the strings of control over us all. Korda is nonplussed about admitting to his use of slave labour and orchestrating famines to control his “workforce.” His religious daughter finds a guiding force in faith she hopes to steer her father with but is also not above excess indulgence herself. But these aspects are wrapped up with the kind of ironic distancing that Anderson is known for, and often accused of being over-reliant on.

(Image via Universal // Focus Features.)

Anderson’s best works puncture his own self-importance. The Grand Budapest Hotel can make jokes about the cruelties of war but in the end it cannot truly escape its wrath. The Royal Tenenbaums doesn’t shy away from how damaged its characters are and how generational pain forever lingers under the skin of even the most seemingly apathetic of the clan. Anderson’s best films have heart, cynicism, and the self-awareness to know that life isn’t like one of his films. I’m not sure that The Phoenician Scheme has that quality. It feels lighter than Asteroid City, with its potentially prickly themes of capitalist terror and the fear of God becoming asides in their own story. this is one of Anderson’s most unexpectedly violent films but the stakes feel oddly flimsy. With a plot that is both more complicated than that of previous films but harder to follow, it becomes hard to cling to the themes and the central relationship between Zsa-zsa and Liesl.

It all remains very watchable. Anderson doesn’t do boring, and even at the most inconsequential there is always something stunning to look at. But this is mid-tier Anderson. Frankly, I wanted more: more stakes, more character, more room to just breathe. The true heart of The Phoenician Scheme is the simple idea that family is what matters most, and yet Anderson falls short of making us believe that with his central characters.

But I still think you should go see it. For all of my grumbles about Anderson and his tics, it’s a miracle in the current media landscape that we even have a filmmaker like him getting decent-sized budgets to regularly make whatever the hell he wants. This distinctive feel, the inimitably Anderson-esque, is absent in every other quadrant of the IP-dominated sphere. This is an industry eager to squash distinctiveness rather than foster it. and as AI losers try to plagiarise him, it’s good to be reminded that you can’t truly copy something this good.

What the big plagiarism machine misses about Anderson’s work is, well, everything. Those crappy fake trailers never understand his humour or dark streak. They miss that his work is full of interesting camera work, not a succession of static shots with actors staring down the lens. He does action scenes! He has a dense stable of influences, from Jacques Tati to Stefan Zweig to the Dutch masters and beyond. This is an immensely dedicated cinephile who has a lot to say. Scrapping all of that and turning it into nothing but a series of prompts entirely misses the point. Then again, AI theft and tech bro stupidity is all about missing the point.

The Phoenician Scheme is in UK cinemas now and will open in USA on May 30^th.