Stream It Or Skip It?

With The Phoenician Scheme (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video), filmmaker Wes Anderson gives us maybe his most inscrutable character yet: Anatole Zsa-Zsa Korda, a ruthlessly amoral and disgustingly rich mid-century industrialist played by Benicio del Toro. The man pursues the titular business deal hither and yon, visiting the likes of Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson and Jeffrey Wright and Benedict Cumberbatch, all potential investors, towing along with him his daughter, a nun, played by the revelatory Mia Threapleton, offspring of Kate Winslet. So it’s another exercise in eccentricity from the master of it, his films frequently dubbed “dollhouses” and “dioramas” and such, and the question here, as it is with all of the director’s work, isn’t whether it’s good or funny or well-made, but whether it’s Major Anderson or Minor Anderson.

The Gist: 1950. An airplane buzzes through the air. A sudden explosion sends it crashing to the earth. This is business as usual for Korda, who survives assassination attempts like the proverbial cat with nine lives. As he comes to, carrying a vestigial organ that he can’t quite fit back into his body, we hear a newscast breathlessly orate his soon-to-be-retracted obit: Korda is the richest man in Europe, known as “Mr. 5%” for his numerous lucrative business deals. He manufactures weapons and uses slave labor and controls grain stores so he can capitalize on famine. He has three dead wives (They say he murdered them, although he denies it and who are They anyway?) and nine sons who live in a cramped loft near his massive palace, and one daughter he sent to a nunnery when she was five. He will soon be dismayed to learn that she actually became a nun – at least we think, because he’s not big on expressing dismay. Or any emotion, for that matter. He’s as deadpan as Wes Anderson’s characters get.

But this near-death experience is different. The unconscious Korda visits a starkly black-and-white cloud-buffered heavenish place suggesting he’s subconsciously worried about eternal judgment – a place that we’ll eventually learn is ruled over by God As Played By Bill Murray, As It Should Be. So when he awakens, he summons the habited Liesl (Threapleton) and declares her the sole heir of his fortune. Here’s the catch: She has to formally cease being a nun. “The church can claim a lien on our family business,” Korda quips. “You can still believe in God if you wish.” She agrees, hoping she can use his wealth for good and make up for the profound ills her father has wrought upon the world. Then we wait a beat and in the next scene she’s wearing red lipstick and blue eyeshadow.

Now that she’s invested in business endeavors, Liesl will accompany Korda as he pursues the biggest deal of his lifetime: The Phoenician Scheme. Godspeed to anyone who can make sense of it. It has something to do with a variety of plans kept inside a variety of shoeboxes, and by the end of the movie it manifests as a model that looks like a Bond villain’s lair. But it involves rustling up investors whose percentage of financial interest is helpfully tallied and updated via title cards. Bjorn (Michael Cera), an entomologist and tutor turned into Korda’s personal assistant, will accompany Korda and Liesl as they zip around, visiting American businessmen (Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Wright), a prince (Riz Ahmed), a gangster (Mathieu Almaric), the head of a guerilla cabal (Richard Ayoade), a cousin Korda wants to marry purely for business reasons (Johansson) and a lunatic uncle with a beard even Rasputin would envy (Cumberbatch). Meanwhile, an American agent (Rupert Friend) attempts to disrupt Korda’s scheme by manipulating the market value of rivets. Even if the scheme doesn’t come to fruition, well, maybe Korda will soften enough to recognize that the estrangement with his daughter may be at a permanent end. Maybe.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Phoenician, Asteroid City and The French Dispatch are a quasi-trilogy for Anderson, so I’m going to hike up my britches and rank them!

3. The Phoenician Scheme. Minor-plus Anderson. Funny. Clever. Smart.

2. The French Dispatch. Major-minus Anderson, although it demands a rewatch.

1. Asteroid City. Major Anderson, might land top-three status when the dust settles.

Performance Worth Watching: Like I said, Threapleton is a revelation. She seems born to play a Wes Anderson character (see also: Cera, Michael), and exquisitely conveys sadness, hope, moral fortitude and a glint of comic mischief in one readably unreadable expressionless expression.

Memorable Dialogue: A few mighty withering Andersonian one-liners: 

“He’s fiddling with it.”

“Is this an act?”

“Why do you need to keep assassinating me all the time?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Advice for anyone struggling to find the emotional hook amidst Anderson’s myriad zany sight gags, whiplash cutaways, zingy dialogue, impenetrable plot maneuvers and (gentle spoiler incoming) sequences of Tom Hanks playing basketball: Focus on Threapleton. Her subtle mannerisms and the way she carries herself reveal volumes about not just her character – who says nary a word on it but is clearly on the fence about committing fully to Catholic piety – but an entry point to the least-lovable of all Anderson protagonists. 

Korda is possibly the least-lovable of all Anderson characters, a deeply flawed exploitationmonger and godawful father whose passion project might actually be rooted in passion this time (his past endeavors strike me as clinically standard nasty capitalism) even though it looks like some kind of evil fortress. It’s hard to get behind this guy. But just look at Liesl. That face is on his side – sort of, if she can get past the mystery of what happened to her mother and what the bible really says about slavery – a face that sees a redeemable soul and persuades us to at least consider the same. It’s not easy for us or her or anyone; although del Toro delivers no teeth-gnashing diabolical speeches, his matter-of-fact statements about the cruelty he has unleashed on his fellow humans are utterly frigid. But funny. Frigid but funny. Laughs carry a lot of water in any situation, especially fictional portrayals of putrid wealth hoarders incapable of empathy, heavy emphasis on the word fictional.

And what a tremendous dynamic Threapleton shares with del Toro, their characters converging and generating a crossroads where each serves as the other’s catalyst for change. For the better. That’s the essential core of the film, without which it might just be an uproariously funny collection of meticulously arranged whimsical-comedy setups. The by-now familiar Andersonisms are many, at least visually – symmetry, side-scrolling cameras, color color color. Narratively, it’s stripped down compared to the stories-within-stories tangle of his other recent works, and part of the comedy is the realization that even still, the scheme within the Phoenician Scheme is utter nonsense, impenetrable even to the ugliest bunker-buster. Its heart, thankfully, is easier to reach. 

Our Call: I have to this point failed to mention that Cera is as funny in this as any other film in his career. His primary job is to speak in a ridiculous Norwegian accent and carry around a crate full of complimentary hand grenades. Not a bad gig if you can get it. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.