PG-13 | 1h 41m | Comedy | 2025
Director Wes Anderson has long suffered from a bad case of Wes Anderson-ism. His Wes Anderson-ism appears to be worsening. “The Phoenician Scheme” is archetypal Anderson but significantly more so.
Zsa-zsa
Lead character Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Benicio Del Toro), a ruthless, callous, charismatic, European industrial tycoon, is based on several real-life business titans, including Aristotle Onassis, Stavros Niarchos, Calouste Gulbenkian, and Fouad Malouf. Zsa-zsa is universally loathed by business partners, bureaucrats, and former employees alike.
We meet him as he survives his sixth plane crash. He constantly faces assassination attempts and therefore likes to enter the cockpit mid-flight, reach over, hit the pilot’s ejection seat button, blow the pilot out the roof—and hope for the best. Zsa-zsa’s been quite lucky so far.
All three of Zsa-zsa’s ex-wives have mysteriously died, which is the cause for much gossip. He’s got nine boys and one girl, some biological, some adopted. Just in case—the adopted ones might turn out to be better than the biological ones—one never knows.
Liesl
Zsa-zsa summons his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s daughter). Some years prior, Liesl had hied herself to the nunnery, but her dad informs her that he intends to cut out all his multitudinous boys from his will and make Liesl the sole heir to his fortune.Liesl’s not having it. For one, she’s married to God; secondly, she believes that Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch) is her biological father, and last but not least, she’s heard through the grapevine that Uncle Zsa-zsa was responsible for mom’s death.
Vehemently denying such claims, Zsa-zsa convinces her that he didn’t murder his ex-wife; Uncle Nubar did. Zsa-zsa then walks his daughter through his life’s great vision: The Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme. All the while, Bjorn (Michael Cera) tags along with them, while pining for Liesl.
Zsa-zsa’s vision is all impeccably and Wes Anderson-ly laid out and organized with shoeboxes that contain information on his various projects. These are as follows:
1) Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson) and the Utopian Outpost 2) Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the Korda Reliquary 3) Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed) and the Sacramento Consortium 4) Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric) and the Newark Syndicate, and last but not least: 5) Chez Zsa-zsa.
Got all that? I definitely wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the press notes. Do you perhaps also glean, from that list, a sense that it would not lead to anything other than tedium-unto-death?
Naturally, each box represents a chapter in the film. Zsa-zsa and Liesl visit his partners on the various projects, all of whom accuse the tycoon of tinkering with the contracts. The disagreements escalate to full-on conflagrations.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’
Anderson caught some flak about the diversity quotient of his films. He’s tried to accommodate, but no matter how much human color there is, the emotional content, regardless, is extremely beige, and will always be so. It’s Anderson’s great joy.
For example, the film’s obsessive attention to detail includes the books that Zsa-zsa peruses inside his private plane, and every shot is perfectly organized and framed. This obviously displays a tremendous commitment to craftsmanship. It’s also dull beyond belief.
As usual, Anderson has managed to attract a stellar ensemble cast, namely, F. Murray Abraham, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johannson, Bill Murray, and Jeffrey Wright. Also, as usual, they’re all underwritten characters and none of them get a chance to shine.
