Review: THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

 by Rob DiCristino

“Help yourself to a hand grenade.”

The Phoenician Scheme opens, as most Wes Anderson productions do, on an impossibly neat and aesthetically precise palette of dioramic splendor: A subtitle places us somewhere over Eastern Europe circa 1950. Our first shot is of mustachioed business mogul Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) seated comfortably in the cabin of his private aircraft. He holds a cigar in one hand, while one of the many imposing-looking tomes we’ll see him devour — each one with typically arcanic titles like Important Patrons of the High Renaissance — sits in the other. Three rows back, in a bucket seat near a window on the opposite side of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel’s meticulous frame, is his young assistant. The usual bits and bobs of Andersonian sundry fill out the rest of the shot, and it’s just as the audience is starting to wonder how The Phoenician Scheme will distinguish itself from the auteur’s other mid-century dollhouse pictures that a sudden explosion rips the young assistant in half at the waist and sprays his bloody viscera all over the cabin.

There’s no need for alarm, though, not even as the plane loses cabin pressure and crashes headlong into a remote wheat field. These mishaps are typical for Korda, a scoundrel of such ill repute that he’d need more than the usual allotment of fingers and toes to count all the attempts on his life. Assassination is just the price of doing business for Korda, who carries no passport, claims no nation as his home, and, until now, has seen no reason to build relationships with any of his ten children. This latest incident is notable only because it comes as Korda plots his great masterwork: The titular Phoenician Scheme, a complicated infrastructural boondoggle involving a consortium of multinational engineering and construction firms (headed by the likes of Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Riz Ahmed). Eager to secure his legacy, Korda recruits his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton as the devout Sister Lisel) and new assistant (Michael Cera as Bjørn) on a cross-country jaunt to finalize the negotiations.

We’ll meet other colorful characters along the way, of course, including Richard Ayoade’s militant communist revolutionary and Benedict Cumberbatch’s nefarious Uncle Nubar, whose feud with Korda stems from unspoken resentments related to the murder of Lisel’s late mother. We’ll even meet God (Bill Murray because, well, who else?) and his choir of heavenly cherubim (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, F. Murray Abraham, and others) in a series of out-of-body hallucinations that force Korda to reckon with a life spent amassing a fortune at the expense of his humanity. Yes, Anderson is back in Bad Dad Faces Death territory, a theme that defines both career highlights like The Royal Tenenbaums and unfairly maligned works like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We’re also ruminating on memory and purpose à la The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City, stories about, at least in part, the reconstitution of dreams once sacrificed in the name of survival.

And while this may all sound like too much soup for one bowl, The Phoenician Scheme is delightfully light on its feet and understated in its execution. Eschewing the complicated framing devices of Asteroid City and the abrupt episodic shifts of The French Dispatch, Anderson and frequent writing collaborator Roman Coppola unfurl the film’s half-dozen chapters with an urgency and deftness that recall earlier — it must be said, simpler — works like Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom. Benicio del Toro plays Korda as a world-class bullshitter in the same league as Royal Tenenbaum and Steve Zissou, but there’s a little Fantastic Mr. Fox to him, as well, an endearing pragmatism that softens the ground around him even as he struggles to get off his back foot. Newcomer Mia Threapleton brings a confidence befitting her pedigree — she’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and director Jim Threapleton — and her tête-à-têtes with del Toro and Cera are seasoned with the same winning vulnerability that underlines the very best of Anderson’s character work.

This reliance on familiar melodies doesn’t mean that The Phoenician Scheme lacks the profundity of Anderson’s more complex stories, however, merely that its breeziness makes those themes a bit easier to digest as a whole. Anderson is still wrangling with infinity and using empathy as a tonic for the absurdity of the universe — The Phoenician Scheme’s epilogue is perhaps the most nakedly romantic movement we’ve seen from the director in the last few years — and we’re still treated to all the usual oddities and non-sequiturs, including a rambunctious fraternal wrestling match, a two-on-two basketball shootout with fortunes at stake, and what might be the funniest use of dynamite since Wile E. Coyote. That The Phoenician Scheme feels “easy” doesn’t make it any less of a technical achievement, either, as its production design, costuming, and score are as immaculate as anything in Anderson’s filmography. We’re simply a bit spoiled, I think, by a creative voice so well-honed and self-assured that we’re at constant risk of taking it for granted.

The Phoenician Scheme hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 30th.