Directed by: Wes Anderson
Distributed by: Focus Features
Written by Eric Zhu
60/100
As an aristocrat adventuring across the fictional country of Phoenicia looking to fund an extravagant infrastructural production, the protagonist of “The Phoenician Scheme,” Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), sees Wes Anderson finding himself in a character whose obsession with the bottom-line compromises his fundamental humanity. Korda, who is emotionally detached from his 10 children, beleaguered by visions of heavenly judgment, and under constant threat of assassination, is a man whose ruthless business dealings have left him in a state between life and death. Due to a recognition that continuing down this path will result in his demise, Kabor reconnects with his estranged nun-in-training daughter, Liesl (Mia Threaplton), conditionally promising his fortune in exchange for her company on a grand scheme for funding.
With its linearized narrative and singular focus on a troubled father-daughter relationship, “The Phoenician Scheme” blends the intimate character dynamics of Anderson’s early films and the formal extremity of his late style. The tension between the two modes of Anderson’s filmmaking makes “The Phoenician Scheme” a memorably strange project. In some cases, the episodic narrative relies on characters in a manner incongruent with Anderson’s increasingly spectacular sensibility. This means that the quality of “The Phoenician Scheme’s” distractingly cameo-defined segments varies wildly depending on the strength of its guest performers (Jeffrey Wright’s and Benedict Cumberbatch’s are great, while Scarlett Johansson’s and Riz Ahmed’s feel throwaway). Given this inconsistency, “The Phoenician Scheme’s” narrative progression, which dutifully evolves from farcical encounters with exotic funding bodies to more to tense familial negotiations feels overly-telegraphed.
“The Phoenician Scheme” is at its best when it takes advantage of the relationship between Anderson’s meticulous, dioramic frames and the weight of a guilty conscience. This is Anderson’s most self-critical film in recent memory, a quality foregrounded in an initial static overhead shot which places Anderson’s avatar as the examined subject of his dollhouse framing. Zsa Zsa’s journey towards human connection is symbiotically connected to “The Phoenician Scheme’s” self-conscious style. His inhumanity is initially represented with geometric long shots, and two-shots featuring interactions from different depths of field. By the end of the film, we find Zsa Zsa and his daughter face to face, playing a humble game of cards in medium close-up. “The Phoenician Scheme” deviates from its constructed composure in only one instance. It takes place during a climactic brawl between Zsa Zsa and Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), a man who may have killed Liesl’s mother and like Zsa Zsa, is presumably responsible for inconceivable global strife. The release of familial resentment, which pre-figures a spark of empathy in both men, is communicated through a terrifying close-up of Cumberbatch’s contorted, bearded face. Nubar’s disfiguration is a confrontation with “The Phoenician Scheme’s” latent horrors, and one of the most striking images from Anderson’s ouevre. While Zsa Zsa and Nubar are granted arguably undeserved redemption, the expressive turmoil of their absolution justifies the film’s instructive warning to the uber-rich.
“The Phoenician Scheme” Trailer
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