Wes Anderson should really preface his pictures with a paraphrase of Tolstoy: All Wes Anderson movies are alike; the better Anderson movies are better in their own way. Anderson's work has stylized (some would say calcified) to the point where nonfans have thrown up their hands in despair, while more persistent viewers (fans, even) still flock to screenings, still attempt to suss out what's different in this installment and what Anderson seems up to at the moment.
So it goes with The Phoenician Scheme (2025) and surfacewise I'd argue it's easy to see the diff-- in The Grand Budapest Hotel the palette is decidedly based on different intensities of pink; in The Fantastic Mr. Fox it alternates between earthy brown and fur orange-- very autumnal colors; in Asteroid City it ranges from bright Granny Smith to deep lime; he dabbles in both live action and stop-motion, sometimes with extensive use of miniatures in the former; his tone will range from gratingly twee to deadpan black, and he usually turns a monomaniacal focus on well-off folk with an array of mostly self-inflicted issues.
Again the question, and of course a follow up folks might be interested in: is Anderson's latest different, and is it worth catching? Well let me tell you
On the surface the film is a recognizably Anderson film, with a few cogs switched out and a spanking new paint job slapped on (offhand I'd say the dominant color is marble grey); underneath it belongs to that subset of Anderson films that isn't pure ensemble but dominated by a patriarch-- think The Royal Tenenbaums or the aforementioned Mr. Fox, or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou-- here unscrupulous industrialist Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), who has a tendency to bark while re-negotiating settled deals. Now where have we seen that before?
Let's get this straight: Benicio del Toro is better looking than Trump, is more charismatic than Trump, cannier and more eloquent than Trump could ever hope to be; but that inconsistency and unpredictability and the constant yelling at people he's dealing with, in a futile attempt to force them to submit to his will-- that's pure 47, and it's funny watching him be that way with the various people involved in his scheme, failing, and being forced to adopt other means of persuasion. There is character growth here, despite the deadpan delivery and apparent flatness of the figures (yes the way Anderson shoots them in their intricately designed environments they do resemble cardboard cutouts in a marvelously constructed diorama)-- when Korda plucks his daughter Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton) from the convent, the daughter he now feels he wants but being all screwed up never really bothered to try raise as his own, he treats her like a difficult homework assignment he must carefully study in the hopes of passing a quiz; by film's end he's clinging to her, regarding her as an essential he can't live without.
And Korda's actions have consequences, one of which are repeated assassination attempts-- part of the fun of the film is watching del Toro collect all kinds of cuts and bruises and internal injuries along his travels-- the other having to deal with what he's done to his daughter. Sister Liesl is brought up strict, and judges her wayward father with the same severity that she learned growing up in the convent (doesn't help that he's rumored to have killed her mother), and it's Anderson's conceit to have her look at her increasingly sodden pater with increasingly pitying eyes.
I suppose I must mention Michael Cera as Bjorn, an entomologist turned personal assistant who also happens to have fallen in love with Lucy. Word is that Cera is funny (he is) and a perfect addition to Anderson's regular cast (he can be)--but in my book, in the overall scheme of things, doesn't seem crucial to the film's narrative drive, is at most an entertaining sideshow.
Call this Anderson's attempt at relevance. He's usually sealed off in his own bubble breathing in the increasingly stale air, but here I can't help but be taken by what actually looks like Anderson's attempt to sketch some kind of redemption arc-- if Trump were fitter and younger and actually has a heart under all the machinations (and if-- big difference-- the machinations actually made sense, unlike the random semaphores the present executive-in-chief indulges in in lieu of an actual policy). He flies, nearly dies, is wounded again and again, has to work hard to earn the trust and respect of Sister Liesl-- is Anderson being satiric or prescriptive? Is he actually hoping 47 will watch his film and take notes? Or am I reading all this into a savant of a filmmaker, flailing away in his own self-styled aesthetic bubble? Don't know, not sure, haven't the faintest idea, but-- I'm entertained. That must count for something.
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