In the 27 years since Wes Anderson made Rushmore, his movies have only become more deliriously decorative and ostentatiously ornamental. Among the things audiences will encounter in Anderson’s new movie, The Phoenician Scheme, are shoeboxes containing business plans, multiple rosaries, assorted assassins or would-be assassins, a diplomatic pouch holding handkerchiefs and other valuables, a fruit box repurposed as a crate of hand grenades, and the inscrutable, vaguely illegal scheme referenced in the title. This list is apt to come across as exhausting in the manner of the litany of clubs and societies run by Max Fischer in Rushmore, including the Calligraphy Club, the Bombardment Society, and, most memorably, the Rushmore Beekeepers. Yet the most rewarding way to view The Phoenician Scheme may be to look past its accumulation of filigreed bric-a-brac and focus on the unexpectedly touching, tender story at its center: the unlikely reunion of roguish magnate Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) and his piously inclined daughter, a prospective nun named Liesl (Mia Threapleton).
To be sure, Anderson remains as devoted as ever to building out the world that surrounds his leads. The film is replete with oddball cameos, distracting subplots, and tons and tons of props, all presumably realized to the auteur’s exacting specifications. But, to his credit, Anderson recognizes that few will care about his inexhaustible reserves of inventiveness if they do not first develop a rooting interest in Zsa-zsa and Liesl, whose names may be unbearably twee but whose inner lives, as brought to life by an impressively commanding Del Toro and an appealingly dry-witted Threapleton, are rendered rich and interesting. If, in recent films, Anderson has too frequently neglected to anchor his flights of fancy in strong characterizations, as was the case in his most extravagant but least compelling movie, 2021’s The French Dispatch, in The Phoenician Scheme, he has recovered a proper sense of proportion.
For reasons that aren’t entirely narratively plausible but quickly become useful dramatically, Korda is the persistent target of attempts on his life. With the calm self-assurance that comes with being vastly wealthy, Korda claims to be unperturbed by these near-assassinations — “myself, I feel very safe,” he says more than once. But, in truth, his perilous grip on life has grown wearying. In a news broadcast detailing his presumptive death in yet another airplane crash, Korda is said to be the father of nine sons and one nun, the aforementioned Liesl. It’s a brood sufficiently large, we surmise, to give him some pause about his precarious relationship with death.
To that end, Korda convenes a meeting with Liesl, a novitiate whose outward displays of devotion — her habit, her rosary, her ever-present holy water — are never made to seem empty or perfunctory. Threapleton plays her as a girl with scruples. She harbors righteous indignation about her father’s business dealings, noting at one point his rumored involvement in murders in the furtherance of his interests. But when he apologizes for not having seen her in six years, she forgives him by making the sign of the cross. Though untempted by his fortune, Liesl consents to Korda’s proposal: that his daughter alone should inherit his estate upon his death and take an active role in his affairs before such a time. “You can still believe in God, if you wish,” Korda assures her, but she is more persuaded by the prospect of reforming her brothers, who are dangerously feral: One shoots a flaming arrow in the direction of his father. She gets them to read the Bible, starting at Genesis.
In suggesting this arrangement, Korda is acknowledging the reality of mortality, though his nature remains, for a long while, crass, suspicious, and oblivious to the niceties of civilization. He subjects his administrative assistant, Bjorn (Michael Cera), to a lie-detector test, and barks orders to his underlings. Asked why he has fathered or adopted so many sons, Korda adopts approximately the argument of the present U.S. president, who, according to Vanity Fair, once said he wanted five children because “I will know that one will be guaranteed to turn out like me.” For his part, Korda says, “I play the odds.”
Of course, Liesl turns out to be Korda’s most indispensable offspring. She gamely chaperones her father on various business meetings or shakedowns, most of which revolve around his increasingly urgent need to “close the gap” on a labyrinthine business proposition in the fictitious titular land of Phoenicia. Investors pressured or threatened to participate include a pair of hoops-shooting Californians, Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), and the unseemly but strangely moral proprietor of a nightclub, Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric). Invigoratingly, Anderson evinces a complete lack of respect for political convictions of any and all stripes: When Marxist-spouting guerrillas undertake a violent robbery of Bob’s club and then deign to leave behind reading material — “these pamphlets articulate our policies” — Anderson presents the moment as pure farce. Later, the character known as “Bjorn” is revealed to be an American intelligence operative tasked with keeping tabs on Korda. His own political preferences are said to be those of a “moderate conservative” — a keen insight into the politics of generation upon generation of federal workers.
By this point, though, Anderson, who co-wrote the story with Roman Coppola, has made clear that Liesl’s vocation has begun to have an impact on Korda: Dream sequences pit Korda against inquisitors in the afterlife, including Bill Murray in a cameo appearance as God. For her part, Liesl, whose appearance gradually becomes less plain and more polished over the course of the film, is accused of being too fancy to be a nun by the Mother Superior (Hope Davis). Yet, in the world of the film, father and daughter have met in the middle: Liesl’s piety has redeemed Korda, and Korda’s undeniable life force has softened Liesl. That Korda agrees to be baptized along with his sons is perhaps a greater victory for the church than if Liesl had remained in a convent.
PUBLIC BROADCASTING, A PUBLIC MENACE?
I have so far left unmentioned Korda’s possibly evil half-brother, Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), Korda’s stern, tattersall-shirt-wearing would-be spouse-of-convenience, Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), and a score that samples generously from Stravinsky. Like Anderson’s previous feature, 2023’s Asteroid City, The Phoenician Scheme is set in the 1950s, which is the perfect epoch for its maker to indulge in his love of midcentury décor and graphics. His collaborators are, as ever, top-flight, including, this time, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who worked with Anderson’s mentor, Peter Bogdanovich, on The Cat’s Meow a quarter of a century ago, and costumer Milena Canonero (Barry Lyndon).
All the same, much as the relationship between Max and his barber father (Seymour Cassel) supplied much of the emotional force of Rushmore, as did the climactic death of the Tenenbaum family’s hound dog Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums, the appealing, evolving give-and-take between Korda and Liesl makes this movie worth investing in. The film’s coda is among the loveliest of Anderson’s career: An impoverished Korda and chastened Liesl sit down in the modest restaurant they now run to play a card game. For all this film’s color and flair, it couldn’t succeed without this rather simple portrait of fatherly love and daughterly care.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.