Well, I apparently missed the chance to see Sinners at matinee prices, so this week I decided to see something completely different: The Phoenician Scheme. Which based on the previews came across to me as the most Wes Anderson-ish Wes Anderson movie that Wes Anderson has made since his last one.
Benicio Del Toro plays Anatole “Zsa Zsa” Korda, a stateless businessman who made his fortune on “clandestine” negotiations, who is being targeted by several groups as a result, and as such has become famous for surviving several plane crashes. “This? I think it’s a vestigal organ. I tried to put it back in. It’s harder than it looks.” After his last such escape from death, he has summoned his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) to be his heir and executor of his estate despite the fact that she is about to take her final vows as a nun. At this occasion Liesl meets Bjorn, Korda’s new administrative assistant (played by Michael Cera, who seems like he decided to take Michael Sheen’s look in Good Omens and run with it). Liesl resents Korda for losing her mother; Korda tries to motivate Liesl to join him by promising to confront the man he thinks killed her mother, Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), his “mother’s son.” “Your brother.” “Half brother.” “My uncle.” (It’s that kind of movie.)
Like Anderson’s last few films (which I haven’t seen) there is an all-star cast, but unlike The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou there isn’t really a core ensemble. Such dynamic that exists is mostly between Del Toro and Threapleton, who is capable of shrugging her shoulders without moving her face a single centimeter. The meaning of the story, if there is one, seems to be in the contrast of these two characters and the question of what God wants of human beings, the answer to which is as definitive and non-definitive as everything else in this movie.
Ultimately, I’m not sure that I liked The Phoenician Scheme. Anderson’s almost stereotypical drollness clashes badly with the level of violence that starts from the get-go (compared to say, The Royal Tenenbaums where the subject of death was handled with more maturity). And while I joke that coming into this it looked like “the most Wes Anderson-ish movie that Wes Anderson has made since his last one” this turned out to be exactly correct. It stands to reason that “the Scheme” and “the Gap” are just plot devices to get from one scene to another, but the general incoherence of the deal and the end goal just make it that much more obvious. Still, The Phoenician Scheme does have the Anderson period-piece look, some good dialogue, good if deliberately mannered acting, and Bill Murray’s greatest cameo ever.