For over thirty years of filmmaking, Wes Anderson has remained one thing: himself.
From shooting the semi-autobiographical Rushmore at his alma mater high school, to reanimating his childhood muse‘s story in Fantastic Mr. Fox, the masterful misfit of the Sundance Generation has never conformed to any vision but his own. An auteur in every sense of the word, his oddly satisfying picturesque direction and quirky dry writing need no introduction. With the release of Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature film, this is perhaps becoming his Achilles heel.
The Phoenician Scheme is everything audiences have come to love about Wes Anderson and therein lies its fundamental flaw. Varying from passable to fleetingly enjoyable, the film continually restricts itself with Anderson’s style as more of a crutch than a craft. It feels artistically unambitious, leaning upon Anderson’s established formula to diminished effect. For a director who was once groundbreaking in his creative approach, his signature eccentricity is no longer charming to watch. It’s a viewing mandate.
That’s not to imply The Phoenician Scheme was made out of pure obligation, it being dedication of his late father-in-law Fouad Malou. A former Lebanese construction engineer, Malou’s “aura of terrifyingness” – as Anderson puts it – would inspire the protagonist of Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benecio del Toro). This would lay the groundwork for the story, picturing the colonial tycoon reconnecting with his estranged nun daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) and naming her heir to his empire “on a trial period”. Joined by her and his assistant Bjørn, he enacts the titular shoeboxed scheme to industrialise Phoenicia as the trio journey across the otherworldly nation.
All the ingredients are there for another Wes Anderson classic, yet The Phoenician Scheme is ultimately let down by its stylistic indulgence. It remains aesthetically breathtaking, all those involved in the film’s production, costume and art design bringing Phoenicia to life as a fabled amalgamation of the Middle East. The film marks Anderson’s first collaboration with cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who whisks a comparatively grittier yet still fantastical, visual flair to the dark comedy.
Sadly, these collaborative efforts prove to be the perfectly symmetrical icing on the cake of a hollow story, all of it collapsing beneath the paper-thin base of Anderson’s character writing.
From the core, to the supporting cast, to the background extras; all characters featured have no voice – seeming indistinguishable from one another in their deadpan dialogue and delivery. The otherwise masterful del Toro suffers most from this, his performance and Anderson’s screenplay never quite clicking to portray something truly memorable. In his prior outing under Anderson’s direction, del Toro’s portrayal of the unhinged artist Moses Rosenthaler, alongside his prison guard-lover Simone (Léa Seydoux), was the highlight of the extremely underrated French Dispatch. Following Asteroid City and his Netflix collection of Roald Dahl-adapted shorts, the casting announcement of del Toro was naturally exciting, the character Zsa-Zsa specifically being written with him in mind.
Yet, for the bulk of the film’s runtime, Zsa-Zsa is drably underwhelming to view. Del Toro’s hushed performance and unchanging delivery of each line at times becomes exhausting. While this candid characterisation has come to be known as a subversive staple of Anderson’s films, his characters’ quirkiness never served as a substitute for personality. Conversely, del Toro’s performative flatness renders it impossible to connect with Zsa-Zsa, his inhumanity being more so in his apparent boredom than supposed ruthlessness.
The new additions to Anderson’s cast fare much better with the insipid script, Mia Threapleton’s portrayal of Sister Liesl fittingly being the saving grace of the film. The second generation actress is perfectly suited to Anderson’s writing, her straight-faced performance as the stoically devout nun being the film’s endearing backbone. As an odd couple, the side-romance between Liesl and Cera’s Bjørn are a handful of the times the characters feel distinct in their oddity. Unlike the majority of dialogue, their back-and-forth exchanges never seem like one man’s interior monologue. Liesl is ultimately the best of Anderson’s writing in one of his weakest films, embracing the archetypes behind caricatures to tell wonderfully resonant stories.
Unfortunately, the film is let down by her dynamic with Zsa-Zsa, their father-daughter bond rarely eliciting an emotional response. The pair are not allowed to be characters in the name of stamping a creative trademark, expositing their feelings and revealing pivotal information in the exact same unchanged monotone manner. The film undermines itself in this regard, the auteurial alooflness exempting any form of sincere honesty between the characters. The actors truly give it their all with the material they’re given, but any idiosyncrasy in their performance is lost in the ensemble crowd. On the surface level, this may sound like what Anderson has been recognised and acclaimed for – this notion being exactly what’s self-limiting him as a filmmaker. What was once game changing is now conventional, as in conforming to his own flanderised reputation, Anderson leaves no room for any semblance of nuance in his characters.
By the time this review is published, The Phoenician Scheme will be available to view on streaming as a piece of moderately enjoyable, yet ultimately forgettable, background entertainment. A slice of mediocrity amongst Anderson’s greatness, it doesn’t stand out as black mark on his filmography, even in its dipped quality. Yet truthfully, it doesn’t stand out at all in its mediocrity.
Alas, it crucially falls short in Anderson’s mimicked style without any substance to his characters, leaving both them and the film itself with no discernible identity. Who knows what Wes Anderson’s following thirteenth film will tell the story of, but here’s to hoping the writer-director can be one thing: himself – and not a parody of what once set him apart.
