In ‘The Phoenician Scheme,’ iconic auteur Wes Anderson trades alpine hotels and asteroid-hit towns for oil fields, racketeering, and cartoonish assassination attempts in a 1950s world. What remains intact is Anderson‘s unmistakable voice, always quirky, composed, and sneakily melancholic, as he delivers a gorgeously rendered black comedy about power, inheritance, and existential disarray.
Led by a career-high performance from Benicio del Toro as Anatol “Zha-zha” Korda, the richest man in Europe (and the slipperiest), ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ tracks him through his sixth plane crash, several failed assassinations, and one heavenly detour as he recruits his estranged daughter, Leisl (Mia Threapleton in a remarkable debut) to save his crumbling crime empire.
Visually, the film is quintessentially Andersonian: a handmade diorama of a volatile world. The architecture ranges from Romanesque to ‘50s pastiche. The deserts are constructed on a soundstage, and the explosions are bright, blooming, and incredibly fake, going off with a toy-like precision. Everything looks like it is a part of a set, which only deepens the surrealism of watching political unrest unfold like a puppet show.
Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel bathes this imagined land in blues, teal, and sun-baked oranges with vivid accents of red. Dollies slide through ornate windows. Wigs are oversized. Everything is performed with an Andersonian dryness. The visual palette, supported by stunning costume work and insane production design featuring hieroglyphics, a bejeweled “secular rosary,” and shoe boxes of plans, builds a world that feels miniature and immense.
Zha-zha Korda is a marvelous new creation from Wes. Del Toro plays him as a reserved, amoral capitalist, known affectionately, or not, as “Mr. 5%” for his legendary status as one of the wealthiest men on earth. He is an atheist and an egotist, but like many Anderson protagonists, he is also a man desperate for connection and haunted by his legacy. “I’m still in the habit of surviving,” he quips after yet another near-death experience, before ordering a breakfast martini and consulting blueprints for his newest infrastructure scheme.
When his luck runs dry, he turns to Liesl, a nun-in-training and his estranged daughter, whom he sees fit to be his heir. Threapleton’s Liesl is sharp and deeply skeptical, played confidently by the young actress. Her interactions with her father are full of tension and tenderness, the film becoming a father-daughter road movie in disguise, one concerned with faith, responsibility, and generational trauma.
The plot, in typical Anderson fashion, is intricate and absurd. There are racketeering charges, a communist militia, an inflation crisis, assassination attempts, and a hilariously uncoordinated fight scene between Del Toro and a wigged-out Benedict Cumberbatch as the volatile Uncle Nubar. Characters casually throw out lines like “They say they murdered all your wives,” or “Help yourself to a hand grenade,” with perfect deadpan.
Michael Cera steals every scene he’s in as the adorably accented tutor turned administrative assistant Bjorn. His delivery turns every line into a joke, even when the words themselves are not funny. Surprisingly, ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ marks Michael Cera’s first collaboration with Anderson, a pairing that feels so natural it’s almost shocking it didn’t happen sooner. Best known for his awkward sincerity, Cera gets to stretch his range here, embracing both slapstick and cerebral wit with a confidence that feels like a long-overdue revelation. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston are having a ball as they face off against Zha-zha and Riz Ahmed’s Prince Farouk in a game of H-O-R-S-E, as is Scarlett Johansson as Cousin Hilda. Jeffrey Wright and Richard Ayoade fill out the ensemble as ideological foils: Wright as the ideological, greedy pragmatist Marty and Ayoade as a communist revolutionary, Sergio. Great actors goofing off in wonderful costumes and beautiful sets– Anderson’s specialty.
But there’s a bite beneath the whimsy. The screenplay (co-written with Roman Coppola, who also produces) satirizes not just international politics but the very systems that make power seem divine. In a key thread, Zha-zha enters stylized heaven sequences after being momentarily killed in a plane crash. There, black-and-white imagery and surreal blocking accompany his encounter with “God” (played by Bill Murray, of course), and a tribunal featuring Willem Dafoe and F. Murray Abraham. These interludes, scored with thunderous, mournful piano from Alexandre Desplat, are beautiful and bleak. In Anderson’s afterlife, guilt is eternal and God is mostly absent, or maybe just bureaucratically overworked.
Religion permeates the film, but not reverently. Anderson presents a world where faith and capitalism are locked in a pas de deux, each claiming higher authority. Leisl wears green makeup and tights with her nun’s habit. In one brilliant gag, Liesl clutches a bejeweled “secular rosary,” her faith caught between spiritual ideals and her father’s sins.
The satire is global but intimate, balancing geopolitical parody with familial pain. Liesl’s mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Zha-zha’s long-dead ex-wife, appears in heavenly cameos, offering cryptic wisdom that suggests all revolutions, even personal ones, are cyclical.
Through it all, Anderson’s formal control never wavers. The five-act structure moves briskly, each section introduced with chapter titles and tableau openings. The dialogue is precise, the humor dry as the desert, and the tone masterfully calibrated. ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ may be his most politically explicit film to date, but it’s still emotionally reserved, each outburst funneled through stylized performance and formal distance.
Anderson has always been accused of being emotionally aloof, but that critique misses the tenderness buried beneath his compositional rigor. Here, the emotion seeps through: in the warmth of Bjorn’s structured suits, the futility in Zha-zha’s bombastic schemes, and the quiet longing in a final exchange between father and daughter.
By the end, ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ does not offer a moral so much as a mood: one of resignation, resilience, and reuniting. Zha-zha, for all his flaws, emerges not as a monster but as a man struggling to make meaning in a world that only rewards control. And Liesl, steadfast, dry-witted, with mascara running from the heat, might just be the film’s true revolutionary.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ is both a return to form and a bold step forward for Wes Anderson. It’s visually exquisite, intellectually cheeky, and emotionally surprising. Like a Fabergé egg with a grenade inside, it’s delicate, deadly, and a little bit divine.
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