I don’t know what kind of reputation Wes Anderson has amongst people of my generation.
My guess is that Anderson’s biggest fans are hipsters. They probably come in various shapes and sizes. Having spent my undergraduate years in Portland, Oregon, I have interacted with enough hipsters and hipster-related content for a lifetime.
Nonetheless.
Yesterday, I went to watch The Phoenician Scheme with my parents at a local movie theatre. It wasn’t my idea. But I’ll be leaving for Madison soon, and I figure I should spend as much time as I can with my family before I do.
I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie. The last time I went to a movie theatre was back when I thought honesty and decency were all that were needed to live a good life.
Ah, youth.
In other words, I don’t watch movies. I read novels, and I review them halfheartedly. Please keep your expectations to a minimum.
What I can say is that I walked out of the theatre vaguely disappointed. The film was, in my opinion, somewhat below average. It had two strengths, but one overwhelming weakness.
The Phoenician Scheme follows the exploits of “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, a arms dealer and industrialist played by Benicio del Toro, who devises a plan to overhaul the infrastructure of Phoenicia with slave labor. Due to his unethical business practices, Korda’s life is continually threatened by assassins, and he attempts to reestablish a relationship with his daughter Liesl, played by Mia Threapleton, a 21-year-old Catholic nun. Korda urges Liesl to leave the Church and take over his business in the case of his death. National governments collude to raise the price of building materials, which stymie Korda’s infrastructure project and threatens to bankrupt him. Korda, Liesl, and Korda’s administrative assistant Bjorn — with whom Liesl later develops a relationship — travel around Phoenicia to ask investors involved in the infrastructure project to give them money to complete the project.
Of course, a lot of bullshit happens along the way.
Now then.
As I said, the film has two clear strengths.
First, Mia Threapleton as Liesl was great. Her deadpan, monotone delivery fit the film’s tone perfectly, and her conversations with her father Korda were occasionally hilarious. Liesl is dramatic, strong-willed and self-serious, and Threapleton captures her tentative transition from covenant strictures to “ordinary” life masterfully. Amidst a backdrop of unmitigated chaos, Threapleton performance remains steady and solid throughout.
Second, the film was genuinely funny. I’ve also watched Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums, but neither can compare to the The Phoenician Scheme when it comes to humor. In my opinion, the film is ultimately a comedy despite its attempts to “dig deep” into the relationship between Korda and Liesl.
The name of the game is absurdity. Anderson’s worlds are notoriously unrealistic to begin with, and their overly aestheticized, meticulously crafted pseudo-worlds serve as great environments for silly, farcical dialogue and ridiculous, over-the-top developments. Some of Anderson’s cuts were hilarious, as was much of the dialogue between the characters in the first half of the film. The Phoenician Scheme is the funniest movie I have watched in a while.
This is high praise.
And yet, I said I walked out of the theatre disappointed.
Why? Because despite its excellent performances and jokes, The Phoenician Scheme suffers from a weakness that plagues all of Anderson’s films: a kind of shallowness and superficiality that postures as substance and depth.
Anderson’s characters, and the relationships among them, are similar to his backdrops. Anderson’s backdrops are strangely two-dimensional; they are bright and cute and meticulous, resembling intricate paper-mache projects, but they often lack perspective, contrast, and depth. This is how I felt about the relationship between Korda and Liesl, which is arguably what the film is all about. Korda makes repeated grand statements along the lines of “Liesl, I care about you more than anything in the world,” and Liesl comes to return the sentiment as the film progresses, but the relationship between them just didn’t seem like the relationship between a real father and a real daughter; it felt like a romanticized one. It relied too much on pithy quips and dramatic gestures and neglected to explore moments of true vulnerability and emotional connection. The relationship between the two is fraught and complicated; Korda sent Liesl to live in a covenant when she was five and hadn’t communicated with her in over a decade, and Liesl was under the impression that Korda had killed her mother. Anderson had the opportunity to tell a heartfelt, moving story about a father reconnecting with his daughter, but he leaned too heavily into his kitschy, excessive, and ornamental style — both visually and narratively — to pull this off convincingly. Indeed, for me the cringiest moments in the film were precisely when Korda makes a touching remark or gesture to Liesl. They felt about as “real” as Anderson’s bubblegum sets.
The massive cast did Anderson no favors on this point. There wasn’t enough time or space for Korda and Liesl to develop a realistic, meaningful connection, for every shot featured 20 different characters, all played by high-profile actors such as Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and Bryan Cranston. There was simply too much going on, both on the screen and narratively, for Anderson to delve into the weighty and substantial aspects of a father-daughter relationship.
With all that being said, I think The Phoenician Scheme is worth watching, but only if you take it as something other than what it’s trying to be: in other words, an absurdist comedy instead of a heartfelt story of family, mortality, and morality.
I’m inclined to give it a 2.5 out of 5.