After tackling the whimsical worlds of summer camps, alpine resorts, publishing houses, and desert oases, Wes Anderson takes audiences for a jaunt to his most far-flung destination yet: Phoenicia. It’s a peculiar place for a film set in the 1950s. Phoenicia, according to a Lonely Planet travel guide scribbled on a centuries’ old palimpsest that Anderson likely picked up at a Greenwich Village flea market, is a region of the Antiquity era running around the Mediterranean and adjacent seas with a history of complex movements, eras, and kings who ruled the lands from about 2500 to 64 B.C.
If anyone at the time wished he could easily travel from, say, Beirut to Malta to Malaga with a stop in Leptis Magna along the way, the trip likely called for a long and winding camel ride along the coastal periphery. But for any intrepid entrepreneur of conquistador, a connective rail line might be ideal, if centuries too late. Enter Anderson’s latest creation, Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda. He has an ambitious travel plan that’s just the ticket to cure Phoenicia’s travel woes.
Oscar winner Benicio del Toro plays Korda with understated megalomania. His performance anchors The Phoenician Scheme with truly comedic delight. Del Toro proves a worthy check to Anderson’s eclectic whimsy. His mannered reserve accentuates the comedy of Anderson’s screenplay. It smooths out, but doesn’t soften, the twee signature of the auteur’s oeuvre.
Korda marks one of Anderson’s better characters, too. Much like his treatment of Royal Tenenbaum, the filmmaker displays more confidence with building out an ensemble from the strength of a central protagonist, as opposed to juggling a wayward ensemble. Korda’s adventure gets off to a literal bang when he survives another assassination attempt and plane crash (his sixth), but realises his affairs are overdue for being put in order.
The tycoon embarks on a transnational expedition, which begins by congregating his many children. Among the kids is his lone daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novitiate who rejects his extravagant means. Despite her ascetic lifestyle, Liesl displays a shrewd business sense that does her father proud. Korda takes her under his wing, opens a consortium of shoe boxes, and reveals his state of affairs.
The family risks going broke because he’s over-extended his plan with multiple investors to create a rail line that unites the many regions of Phoenicia. There’s just one problem: the system seems as poorly constructed as a Toronto subway line and the tracks don’t meet. Korda therefore enlists Liesl to help him close the gap.
Father and daughter embark on a madcap campaign that tours the many haunts of Phoenicia. They meet a prince (Riz Ahmed), a pair of Newark businessmen (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), a French nightclub proprietor (Mathieu Amalric), a distant cousin (Scarlett Johansson), and Liesl’s shady Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch). Throw in a gaggle of servants, spies, and folks stirring the pot between encounters, including Korda’s new Swedish tutor (Michael Cera), and The Phoenician Scheme offers a cavalcade of Anderson regulars.
Korda’s mission as he navigates these fellow travellers is that he needs each party to adjust his or her investment in the rail line. But nobody favours simple dealings, as characters in Anderson films are wont to do. Sometimes they shoot hoops to make a deal. Other times, they natter, spit-shake, and exchange light fire. Korda, always prepared and ever the gentleman, travels with a robust supply of grenades in a pineapple carrier. He offers them as gifts to begin each meeting with good faith and equal footing.
The follies of The Phoenician Scheme prove consistently amusing, if intermittently confusing. Anderson plays with the chapter format he’s favoured in recent films like The French Dispatch, although it’s less successful here. The logic, figures, characters, locations, motives, and expansive vocabularies simply prove disorienting. The film reflects the adage that comedy ensues by adding ingredients to the pot, if a little too much.
The film also packs a few too many layers of references, if the callback to Antiquities isn’t enough. Anderson buttresses the chapters with surreal interludes in which Korda experiences the afterlife. The vignettes feel ripped from Mighty Aphrodite as Korda converses with deities like a Greek chorus. But these scenes mostly play like excuses to get Anderson regulars Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and F. Murray Abraham into the picture, along with a random cameo by Charlotte Gainsbourg. However, these excursions into the afterlife orient Korda as his supply of grenades dwindles and his percentage of project money to finagle rises.
However, if The Phoenician Scheme feels like Anderson unbridled, it’s inevitably the kind of sprawling auteur-driven work one creates after winning an Oscar. (Anderson scored one for his 2023 short The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.) Narratively, The Phoenician Scheme charts a messy sprawl, but Anderson colours softly within the lines while filling it in. His esoteric references and verbose vernacular are playful enough to enjoy, but not irritating enough to make one want to clobber him with a thesaurus. After the rote oration of Henry Sugar, which oddly felt like his longest movie with Benedict Cumberbatch talking at you for 40 minutes, he’s back to making movies that feel fully alive.
If Anderson’s sprawling plot sometimes gets the better of him, his realization this wacky world and its inhabitants proves joyously entertaining. The old settings force a level of naturalism to his colour palettes and designs. Working with regular collaborator Adam Stockhausen, The Phoenician Scheme plays out in a world of delightful details and old world charms. It bears the fruits of quite possibly the most exhaustive antiquing expedition committed to a production.
If there’s a real find among all the nick-knacks, though, it’s Threapleton. The young star shares little resemblance with del Toro, but Threapleton proves a dead ringer for her famous mother, Kate Winslet. Audiences should quickly stay any nepo baby charges though. Mia has Kate’s acting genes. She’s a natural comic and a terrific screen presence. Threapleton gels amicably with the many co-stars of The Phoenician Scheme’s sprawling ensemble, too. Her chemistry with del Toro plays wonderfully tit-for-tat as father and daughter amicably push each other’s buttons. There’s a sense of play here as del Toro clearly knows the calibre of his young co-star and coaxes Threapleton to excel.
She’s also wonderful with Cera, a newcomer to the Anderson cinematic universe. The soft-spoken star inspires the heartiest laughs of The Phoenician Scheme as the peculiar tutor. Cera’s accent drolly accentuates the “ish” in Swedish. Cera finds the sweet spot between awkward and charming—a natural for Anderson’s grab bag of misfit toys.
While the young stars surprise, so too does the veteran del Toro. One doesn’t usually think of the brooding, sensitive-eyed star of Traffic, 21 Grams, and Che as a comedic hero. But he’s very, very funny here by downplaying the affluent Charles Foster Kane-ish Korda. The dry, mumbly cadence of his voice delivers appropriately explosive zinger.: The best grenades of The Phoenician Scheme aren’t lobbed from Korda’s pineapple box, but from his deadpan wit.
The Phoenician Scheme may be as convoluted as the plot that Korda concocts, but that becomes its dizzying, dazzling charm. Even taken as Anderson’s messiest picture, The Phoenician Scheme remains exciting because it displays his confidence in taking risks.
