As I’ve said before, Wes Anderson is like cilantro. You either love him or you think he tastes like soap (metaphorically speaking, at least).
Me? I love him. (I also love cilantro, but will need to do further research to determine a corollary.)
In fact, over the years, I’ve turned into something of a Wes Anderson apologist. I’ve at least liked all of his films and loved most of them. My favorites, because who can resist ranking him, are The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums. My least faves are Isle of Dogs and The Darjeeling Limited—but honestly, there’s not a dud in the bunch. The complaint I’ve heard most often is that his films are cold, airless—all style, no heart. But I find his stories of misfits fumbling their way toward each other to be enormously touching. (If anything, I think his films can be accused of sentimentality.)
When I defend Anderson’s films, I talk about their uncanny beauty, their comic drollness, their affection for weirdos and outcasts and intellectuals; their stubborn cleaving to all things analog in a digital world. Yes, they are overly orderly—symmetrically placed little dioramas, composed as though they are meant to be viewed from above. Yes, his characters speak in a signature stilted deadpan, often while looking directly at the camera. Yes, his films will undoubtedly contain hand-written index cards or a general cataloging of things and a persistent nostalgia for the fascinations of the 20th century, especially those discovered by a curious and precocious boy from Houston.
But, as Asteroid City, a meta film within a film about an alien landing in the desert, proved, he still has new tricks up his sleeve. His fastidious style is paradoxically flexible—it has the capacity to contains multitudes.
That said, when I saw the trailer for The Phoenician Scheme, featuring every Anderson tic in the book along with most of his regular troupe of actors, I grew concerned. This seemed more like a Wes Anderson parody than a Wes Anderson film. Had the auteur finally succumbed to the inevitable?.
I had sort hoped that, after his Asteroid City broke down the process of storytelling, Wes might go back to basics, play it straight, prove that he didn’t need his distinct style to tell a good story. In fact, he doubled down.
In the opening scene, we meet international businessman/scoundrel Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), who’s a passenger in a small, single engine airplane. There’s a thud and then an explosion. A bomb has gone off, taking out the back half of the plane and top half of his assistant, who was sitting in a jump seat. It’s a joke (I think)—the assistant has been sliced perfectly in half. Anderson even has to do gore in an orderly way.
The opening credits show Zsa-zsa, who has survived the assassination attempt, just as he has survived several others, lounging in the clawfoot bathtub of his regal bathroom. We literally see the image from overhead: the tub perfectly placed to the left of the frame, a small record player behind him, the toilet, with a black seat, and bidet which is being used as an ice bucket for a bottle of champagne (observed closely enough, every Anderson frame contains a little treat); two sinks, perpendicular to each other; and a stunning mid-century modern tile floor.
Just as the perfectly sliced-in-two assistant seems like a bit of self-parody, this overhead shot feels defiant. You think I’m not gonna do me? Dream on.
The Phoenician Scheme is a visual banquet, extremely funny, fast paced, and powered by an Igor Stravinsky score. (This music nerd was pumped.)
But I confess it left me wanting. That thing I always defend Wes over—the emotional connection I feel to the characters and the story—was missing.
I can usually see the direct line from Wes’ imagination to the film itself. The Life Aquatic obviously came from a boyhood fascination with Jacques Cousteau. The Royal Tenenbaums has Salinger’s Franny and Zoey as its muse. The Grand Budapest Hotel is about the cleaving to old world manners and beauty, something Anderson knows a thing or two about. Moonrise Kingdom is about precocious children and first love.
But what is Anderson’s connection to the story of The Phoenician Scheme—wherein the amoral oligarch Zsa-zsa tries to connect with his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s kid), a nun-in-training, and determine if she’s worthy of his fortune. He also has nine small sons that mostly pop up as a kind of visual joke—hanging from banisters and crouched in balconies. (One is always shooting things with a bow and arrow.) But Zsa-zsa has no love or interest in these little boys. He only hopes to earn the affection and trust of his stoic daughter, whose mother died under suspicious circumstances (“They say you murdered her, Liesl says. “They who?” replies Zsa-zsa.) You see, despite his ornate home and trappings of wealth, Zsa-zsa is broke, or runs the risk of becoming broke if he can’t convince his associates to pay the “gap”—essentially the money he needs to become profitable on whatever his latest land-grabbing scheme happens to be. (Not only was I fuzzy on the details, I truly don’t think Wes cares about them.)
Accompanying Liesl and Zsa-zsa on their quest for unscrupulous business partners is the fussy and kind-hearted Bjorn (Michael Cera), who is an entomologist and tutor (not for the children, for Zsa-zsa himself). He instantly falls for Liesl. “Could you imagine falling love with a man like me?” he says, in his Andy Kaufman-as-Latka Norwegian accent.
So we move from set piece to set piece, as Zsa-zsa tries to secure funds. We meet a dashing prince (Riz Ahmed), a pair of midwestern brothers who are supernaturally great at basketball (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), a stern beauty whom Zsa-zsa proposes to just because he can (Scarlett Johansson), a cheerful American ship captain (Jeffrey Wright), and many more. Benedict Cumberbatch also turns up as Zsa-zsa’s brother, who may even be more of a jerk than he is.
There are planes crashes and an ongoing joke about giving out hand grenades as a gift, as though they are cigars There’s quicksand, because kids who grew up in the ’70s like Wes love quicksand. There are beautifully crafted shoe boxes filled with index cards because this is a Wes Anderson film, after all.
But I just couldn’t find my way into it. Is Zsa-zsa supposed to be a stand-in for Trump? Is this Anderson’s oblique way of addressing contemporary politics. (Or, with is 10 children, perhaps he’s supposed to be Musk…or both?). The thing is, we like Zsa-zsa, because he has his own version of a moral code and because he loves his daughter (if only his daughter) and mostly because he is played by del Toro, who is rakishly charming here. And frankly, I don’t want to see a Trump redemption story, if that’s even what this is.
Yes, there is something touching about Zsa-zsa’s relationship with Liesl and, of course, we root for the earnestly romantic Bjorn as well. And it’s funny watching Liesl get slowly but surely corrupted by her father. She begins to drink. Then she starts smoking a pipe. Then she accepts a gift of a bedazzled pipe. (Threapleton, who shares her mother’s round and open face, is wonderful here. She tries to resist the allure of her father’s exotic, chaotic life, but just can’t help herself.) But The Phoenician Scheme didn’t capture my imagination, nor did it enchant me the way other Anderson films have.
I was thoroughly entertained and left a bit cold. Is this what it’s like to not love Wes Anderson?