Benedict Cumberbatch – Baltimore Magazine

Movie Review: The Phoenician Scheme

Max Weiss — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 17:29:48 +0000

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 20^th 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?

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Movie Review: 1917

Max Weiss — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 10:45:00 +0000

There are some films that emphasize the moral murkiness, the absurdity, and the ultimate pointlessness of war. Sam Mendes’s World War I drama, 1917, isn’t that kind of film. It’s more of an earnest “they really were the best of lads, weren’t they?” type deal (the lads in this case are British, not American) and it is concerned largely with myth building and moral absolutes. In that sense, although the film employs a contemporary trick—it creates the uncanny illusion that it was all shot in one continuous take, which evokes a “you are here” sensation—it can accurately be described as old-fashioned. Still, it makes an undeniable case for itself. Corny, for sure. But also exciting, poetic, epic, and stirring. And it has just enough cynicism around the edges to make the whole thing palatable to this war skeptic.

As the film starts, two young soldiers, Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), are dozing off and dreaming about the end of the war, which they hope is imminent. They are awakened rather rudely by another soldier, who tells Blake he’s been summoned by the General. He instructs Blake to “pick a man” and follow him. Naturally, he picks Schofield.

In the captain’s barracks, General Erinmore (Colin Firth) gravely tells them their assignment. The 2^nd Battalion is about to attack the Germans, whom they believe to have retreated. In fact, the Germans are lying in wait—it’s a trap. As all communications have been knocked out, the only way to get this news to the Battalion is on foot. As for why he chose Blake? His lieutenant brother is a member of the 2^nd Battalion. If they get there in time, they’ll be saving not just 1,600 soldiers, but his brother’s life.

Blake, hearing this news, is eager to get going, but Schofield hesitates. Shouldn’t they wait until nightfall? Wouldn’t that be more prudent? But Blake has a full head of steam. Time is of the essence and his urgency to get to his brother overpowers his fear. Reluctantly, Schofield concedes. The camera follows them as they make their way through the narrow trenches to get the front lines, shoving people, who bark at them that they’re going the wrong way. More than any other film I’ve seen, 1917 emphasizes how narrow, crowded, and uncomfortable trenches were, with people often sleeping standing up or waiting, fearfully, for their marching orders.

Eventually, they reach the barracks of Lieutenant Leslie (Andrew “Hot Priest” Scott), who’s supposed to send them off. Leslie is a world-weary, jaded man—one of the film’s token cynics—who thinks the boys have been sent on a suicide mission. He assures them that, although they’ll almost certainly die, they’ll get a medal for their efforts. “Nothing like a scrap of ribbon to cheer up a widow,” he says, with grim gallows humor. He gives them flares to shoot in the unlikely event they make it through “No Man’s Land” (advising them to throw the flares back if they’ve been shot—they’re expensive) and bids them good bye.

No Man’s Land is a muddy field filled with blind pits, barbed wire, rotting corpses of soldiers and horses alike—essentially hell on earth. But they make it through (not before Schofield punctures his hand on some of that barbed wire). This, of course, is only the first of many dangerous fields they’ll have to traverse.

Mendes films the first half of the film like a kind of immersive and highly sensory adventure and buddy film. We’re right there with Schofield and Blake, feeling their fear, their adrenaline, their dogged determination to fulfill their mission. Schofield allows himself one moment of self pity: “Why in God’s name did you have to choose me?” he moans at one point. But for the most part, he’s a brave and loyal friend and soldier. Blake is the more garrulous of the two, always telling stories (about a man whose ear was bitten off by a rat; about his mother’s cherry orchards back home), trying to keep their spirits up. Mendes emphasizes their rosy-cheeked youth—neither appears to even shave yet—and their essential decency.

The action is swift and heart-pounding. One minute they’re in a trip-wired German barracks, one minute they’re dodging a downed fighter plane. One character tumbles into a dangerous waterfall. At every corner, a German sniper might be waiting to kill them.

So yeah, about that moral absolutism. There is one token moment where our heroes see a photo of a German soldier’s children pinned to a bedpost—you see? they have families and loved ones, too!—but for the most part, Germans are evil bastards without a modicum of decency who shoot first and ask questions later.

Both young leads are wonderful but relatively unknown (although I’ve been a fan of MacKay’s since Captain Fantastic) so Mendes packs the film with high-profile cameos. On top of the aforementioned Firth and Scott, we have appearances by Mark Strong, Richard Madden, and Benedict Cumberbatch, all excellent. It’s Strong who acknowledges one dark aspect of war. “Some men just want to fight,” his Captain Smith tells Schofield. His words prove to be prophetic.

1917 is dedicated to Sam Mendes’s grandfather, who fought in the war and “who told us stories,” which probably explains the corniness. There are moments when the film slows down to appreciate something graceful or elegiac—sporadic bursts of fire illuminating the ruins of a blown out church, a woman sheltering an abandoned infant, a group of soldiers listening to a man singing a plaintive English folk song in the woods. It would all be unbearably corny if it weren’t so damn beautiful.

War is hell, Mendes argues, but it sure brought out the best in our lads.

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