Wes Anderson Loses the Plot in The Phoenician Scheme

An overheard conversation between a couple ahead of The Phoenician Scheme went something like this:

Woman: I don’t even know what this movie is about.

Man: It doesn’t matter. It’s just a Wes Anderson movie. There’s never really a plot.

Two years after the “Wes Anderson aesthetic” trend took over TikTok and the internet at large—where creators added quirky music to their everyday videos while demonstrating a clear misunderstanding of his filmmaking style—Anderson seems determined to prove he's not a one-centered-shot pony in his latest effort. Benicio Del Toro heads The Phoenician Scheme as the likely immortal, Trumpian businessman Zsa Zsa Korda, with support from breakout star Mia Threapleton as his estranged nun daughter and Michael Cera as the insect expert slash administrative assistant to Mr. Korda. The film follows this trio throughout their mishaps and quirky adventures, but of course no Wes Anderson film is complete without a knockout ensemble cast. A frankly underutilized but eternally handsome Riz Ahmed plays Prince Farouk, the prince of Phoenicia who is quite diplomatic in assisting with Korda’s Manifest Destiny dreams. A sadly underwhelming performance comes from Scarlett Johansson in the role of Korda’s vaguely European Cousin Hilda—unlike her moving performance in Asteroid City, her short screen time is largely forgettable and her accent reads like a drunken impression. The cast is rounded out by standout performances from Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as men who are better at playing basketball than they are doing business in an unexpectedly comedic scene of H.O.R.S.E., Jeffrey Wright as a fast-talking businessman who seems to have been born in a Wes Anderson factory, and Benedict Cumberbatch in his best Abraham Lincoln cosplay in the role of Korda’s evil half-brother Nubar. Nearly everyone in the cast is firing on all cylinders, but seemingly all are in different vehicles.

The Phoenician Scheme opens in 1950, as Mr. Korda is in the midst of his latest airplane crash, and one of his goons becomes the accidental victim of a Scanners-esque head explosion intended for Zsa Zsa. Anderson comes out of the gate with this uncharacteristic action sequence, followed by a heated confrontation with the airplane pilot (Nathan Fielder, are you there?) After using the “ejecto seato” button on the pilot, Zsa Zsa crashes the plane and is presumed to be dead. He briefly visits the afterlife and has his life’s morality judged by a council including Bill Murray literally as God alongside Willem Dafoe, in a purgatory sequence a-la All That Jazz. Shot entirely in black and white, these pseudo-surrealist Heavenly Council scenes every time Zsa Zsa once again narrowly escapes death read more an Ingmar Bergman facsimile than a Wes Anderson joint. 

On one hand, we can applaud Anderson for trying to distance himself from the titular Wes Anderson aesthetic (although he has previously co-signed such distilling projects like “Accidentally Wes Anderson”) but on the other more cynical hand it feels he’s trying too hard to break out of the niche he’s curated for himself over the past 30 years. When your entire career is distilled to a fleeting TikTok trend, how do you avoid an identity crisis? How do you escape the box you’ve been trapped in while still staying true to your style? Practically every Anderson movie released in the past 10 years has been accused of being a Wes Anderson parody. Math experts weigh in—does a parody of a parody of a parody then become a serious attempt? Or is Wes Anderson cursed by some ancient deity to either be too much of himself or not enough of himself? When he does the same movie again and again and again, he’s making a parody. When he breaks out of the box he’s admittedly created for himself, some die-hard fans say that he’s lost his touch. 

While pondering these things, it quickly becomes difficult to determine exactly what Wes Anderson was going for with this project. Themes of identity crisis are sprinkled throughout The Phoenician Scheme, to a point where it is difficult to ignore. Zsa Zsa in many ways wants to be a better man but chooses his wealth and status obtained by immoral colonialist means (there is a scene where he asks God his thoughts on slavery) while his daughter Liesl frequently grapples with her Catholicism and makes excuses for her unholy behaviors like opulence and drinking. The trigger-happy Communist guerilla army led by Richard Ayoade deals in direct contrast to Korda & Co.’s materialism. The ingredients in this theme soup don’t get nearly enough time to simmer because of the film’s incredibly fast-paced 105-minute runtime. 

The Phoenician Scheme serves as a departure from Anderson’s previous feature Asteroid City, which many considered to be his best modern film. In the “movies about movies” run from 2022-2023 with meta films like Nope and The Fabelmans, Asteroid City offered a love letter to cinema that felt sincere and deeply appreciative of the medium. Anderson has always shown a clear appreciation for cinema history, but often reaches a conflict between his influences and his own personal style. The Phoenician Scheme is no exception. It is Anderson’s most slapstick-y effort yet, featuring a scene where Zsa Zsa and Bjorn hurl each other across a very bad jungle green screen in an atypically violent manner. 

Throughout his career, Anderson has seemed to be allergic to sincerity without using a joke or visual gag to cushion the blow. It’s rare that he fully leans into sincerity between his characters, but his tales of family dysfunction seem the most lived-in and authentic. Seemingly taking notes from The Royal Tenenbaums, the dysfunctional yet loving arc between Zsa Zsa and his daughter Liesl is sure to cure even the most severe of daddy issues. As the two set on a journey across The Mediterranean to settle Zsa Zsa’s debts in order to fund his colonialist dream, Zsa Zsa eventually learns from his daughter’s holiness the error of his ways and promises to convert to Catholicism and pay his laborers. Liesl and Bjorn have a cute but forced romance, and although Zsa Zsa and his eleven children have lost their riches, they lead a pure life. Many of the film’s themes are unclear and from a very white Western point of view, but Anderson is at his best when he explores family dynamics—especially with fathers. After the screening, many viewers expressed a desire for a larger portion of the film’s rather short runtime to be dedicated to a further, more touching exploration of the estranged father/daughter relationship.

Overall, Wes Anderson purists will likely see this as a good-not-great effort, while those looking for a quirky time typical of an Anderson fare will have a good time. Because it’s not entirely a “Wes Anderson aesthetic” movie, viewers both familiar and unfamiliar with his oeuvre may feel alienated. Did TikTok ruin Wes Anderson as we know him, and we’ll never have another Grand Budapest Hotel? Not likely, but a conversation around the distillation of art and cinema into fleeting trends needs to happen sooner rather than later. Before you know it, we’ll be seeing more and more feet on the For You Page, inspired by the “Quentin Tarantino aesthetic.”

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