Tag Archives: Wes Anderson

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

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THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
Dir. Wes Anderson
2025

I have now said for years that I would happily go to a theater simply to see a montage of Wes Anderson costumes and production design ideas, and that the movies are good just happens to be a nice bonus. I advance the argument that Anderson should be considered among the most iconic and influential visual artists of the 21st century, alongside figures like Richter, Murakami, or (ugh) Koons. We see a version of his aesthetic, set in amber by The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom, permeating public spaces and being cyclically imitated on social media. The infamous signifiers, the collections of kitsch arranged as storytelling, the orderly, clean lines throughout a space framed as a symmetrical image, and the emphasis on uniforms and dress tweed are more widely recognized than the visual iconography of any other live action filmmaker.

The Phoenician Scheme marks some noticeable changes in this aesthetic toolbox. Alexandre Desplat’s original music is largely variations on one moody, portentous theme, and the needle-drops trade Serge Gainsbourg and The Kinks for Stravinsky and Beethoven. Longtime cinematographer Robert Yeoman (who has shot every prior live action Wes feature, and many of the shorts too) takes this movie off and is replaced by Bruno Delbonnel, whose signatures often include strong green tones and more muted colors. These are never more feature-forward than in one of the film’s opening scenes, in which our lead Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) meets his soon-to-be-cloistered daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) in the great foyer of their palazzo. It is an enormous, cold room, with nothing but a few paintings breaking up the slabs of gray-green, and more paintings sitting on the floor. Delbonnel gives the majority of The Phoenician Scheme this more muted palette, though later scenes are still sometimes flush with color.

Symmetry is broken at the start of The Phoenician Scheme rather than at the midpoint, when Zsa Zsa’s plane is blown open (with a blood splatter that made most of my audience immediately start cackling) and he’s forced to make a crash landing. Zsa Zsa is an unkillable cat and an unbeatable cad, the most ruthless and callous ultra-rich arms dealer in the world, and a combination of private and government interests will stop at nothing to see him either penniless, jailed, or dead. But even from the start of this film, he’s no longer capable of maintaining the rigid order that’s put him on top of this world, too physically beaten up and personally shaken down to keep the train on track. That’s reflected in his face, too, like in Bottle Rocket and so many Wes films before, cut up and bruised throughout the film.

Zsa Zsa Korda in the film’s opening credit sequence.

So, what is The Phoenician Scheme? Loosely, it’s a corporate “public works” investment built on exploitation and swindling (the film is unafraid to confront Zsa Zsa’s intent to use slave labor) that will, in 150 years, provide a resource-rich base of operations for Korda’s military-industrial empire. Unfortunately, Zsa Zsa’s enemies have successfully created an unstable market for investment, and the film is spent watching Zsa Zsa, Liesl, and oddball assistant Bjorn (Michael Cera) travel from investor to investor and solicit the funds necessary to cover “The Gap.” It sets up a satisfying episodic structure for the film, though maybe none of the episodes delighted me so much as the first featuring Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston. This episode in particular is so delightfully well-done, with so many perfectly timed jokes and such a strong commitment to not overstating any punchline, that I think it’s worth the price of admission on its own.

Anderson borrows a lot from the comedic language of his animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox here. There are deadpan repeated lines, a silent cartoon shrug repeated by multiple characters, and when action does arrive, the straight on close-ups and movement are so similar to the fight between Mr. Fox and The Rat that I immediately felt at home. Fans of the film are going to be repeating “Help yourself to a hand grenade./You’re very kind,” “Myself, I feel very safe,” and “Damnable! To hell!” in much the same way Fox encouraged “Take this bandit hat” and “Are you cussin’ with me?” to worm their way into your phrase book.

Like Fantastic Mr. Fox, I think that aesthetic sensibility supports the film’s emotional core. The relationship between Zsa Zsa and Liesl, and Zsa Zsa with his own peace, is a rich one, forcing them both to accept parts of themselves they’d rather push away without ever turning blame or judgment on Liesl for her reticence. Zsa Zsa’s been a poor father – hardly Wes Anderson’s first – but he’s also been a horrible person. Liesl, from the beginning, confronts Zsa Zsa with suspicion that he killed her mother, one of many women he’s reared children with (he has a horde of ten or so misbehaving, unwanted sons, some wanted and some not, a throng raised down the street except on Saturdays) and he furiously denies it. Over time, he comes to grips with his role in her demise, while also facing near-death visions of an afterlife where his soul is not measuring up to heavenly standards. Many have made comparisons to Powell & Pressburger – I don’t disagree.

Zsa Zsa, Liesl and Bjorn meet with two of the investors in The Phoenician Scheme.

There’s also the question of the film’s political angle. While many describe Wes Anderson movies as “not really about anything” except for being beautiful or funny, his last five or so films are quite political. The Phoenician Scheme is less about “politics” rather than the realpolitik of hypercapitalism, and Anderson uses securing funding as his mechanism for exploring that. I’m sure it’s quite relatable to Anderson, whose films manage to be made with incredibly star-studded casts for fairly low budgets and filmed where he can catch tax breaks for the arts. He portrays this world as being built almost entirely on interpersonal values and the merit of one’s word – Zsa Zsa doesn’t ever successfully find a contribution to The Gap by sweetening the pot or finding a mutually beneficial deal, he does so through emotional, interpersonal appeals. It’s unclear whether or not the near-death experiences and confrontations of his soul have changed his tactics, his execution, or his follow-through, or if the money’s always been this fake.

This review is built on examining the film in this more serious way because, well, I want to push back on the idea that this is a Minor Wes Anderson film, or that Wes Anderson films are all fluff. It’s a supremely funny film, and most people will come out of it laughing about Michael Cera’s incredibly funny character performance as Bjorn the assistant/insect tutor, Ivy League sweats, or the deadpan of Del Toro and Threapleton’s mile-a-minute dialogue. From the opening credits set to Apotheosis from Stravinsky’s Apollo, It’s a real treat of a movie, and I don’t mean to diminish that. I just have spent the last three days thinking about it on more than just those terms, and look forward to doing so for quite some time – and I wanted to put a rave out into the world before it leaves theaters.

BOTTLE ROCKET – UW CINEMATHEQUE

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The short film version of Bottle Rocket, available in higher quality on the Bottle Rocket Criterion disc.

BOTTLE ROCKET
Dir. Wes Anderson
1996

These notes originally ran to supplement UW Cinematheque’s screening of Bottle Rocket on July 25, 2014.

Though Wes Anderson is best known for the diorama-and -dollhouse-like sets of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and the almost literal dioramas and dollhouses of the stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox, viewers will see the intricacy of production design and specificity of detail pared down in Anderson’s first feature film, Bottle Rocket. The story of bumbling would-be bandits who happen to be would-be brothers grants us a naïve and vulnerable look at the filmmaker’s relationship to his home territory and fellow dreamers.

Bottle Rocket marks the feature debut of screenwriter/actor Owen Wilson, who co-wrote the script with Anderson. The two lived in a small home and shared two beds with the other two Wilson brothers, Luke and Andrew (also debuting as protagonist Anthony and John “Future Man” Mapplethorpe, respectively).  Anderson and Wilson would write three films together, culminating with The Royal Tenenbaums. They stopped writing together as Wilson became in higher demand as an actor, and Anderson’s films took a somber turn, beginning with his meditation on irrelevancy with The Life Aquatic (co-written by Noah Baumbach.)

Not until The Life Aquatic would an Anderson film be as sun-drenched as Bottle Rocket. Few films look as warm in their depictions of summer without saturating their oranges and blues; Bottle Rocket instead highlights its yellows, from Dignan’s jumpsuits to the bedsheets of the motel. Few turn of the century filmmakers captured yellows and warmth with the same enthusiasm as Anderson and his go-to cinematographer Robert Yeoman.

Though Bottle Rocket’s visual style is less meticulously staged than its successors, the production design is outstanding. The trademark Anderson handwritten insert – Dignan’s seventy-five year plan – utilizes multiple colors of markers not to reflect Dignan’s inability to plan the heist quickly, but rather his highly capable organization (note that only headers and prefaces appear in blue, whereas actual “plans” appear in red). However, don’t mistake that organization for capability; Dignan’s plans remain vague, often suggesting simple ideas like “odds” as keys to living successfully. Consider that the scenes at the Mapplethorpes’ house were filmed in Frank Lloyd Wright’s John Gillen Residence, a home designed by an architect out of time for a Texan geophysicist.

Though laughs permeate all of Anderson’s films, Bottle Rocket is consistently funny. The majority of the staff deliver these lines casually and conversationally, making the absurd seem normal, nondescript. None relish the opportunity more than James Caan, who chews his way through a rejection of Anthony and a total shutdown of Future Man in his first ten minutes on screen as Mr. Henry. Given a short amount of time in the film, Caan chooses to make the most of what he’s given.

I claim the true star, of surprise to no one who has seen the film, is Owen Wilson’s Dignan, the excitable obsessive and one of Anderson’s iconic characters. Hungry for adventure, he wants to live on the edges of normal life, an outlaw with a heart of gold. He rejects the simple, the casual, the conversational, always “calling his gang” with a birdcall or launching into another layer of his scheme, alienating himself to the point of ignoring his friends’ happiness. But, unlike the self-destructive Max Fischer of Rushmore, Dignan refuses to advance without his companions. Though he storms off angrily, one request from Bob to be on the team is enough to make Dignan declare his one ultimatum; the slightest hint of interest from Anthony is enough to make Wilson flash a beautiful smile. Without the combination of Wilson’s belief in the character’s beauty and his failings, both in the writing and the acting, Bottle Rocket could not exist in its current form.

The film performs a balancing act. It is about the naïveté, adventurous spirit, and social ignorance of Dignan and his love for friends and brothers. Simultaneously it carries the “Born to Run” spirit of living in a town too small for one’s dreams. Each viewing, I have come away feeling differently about its core, though Dignan runs away with my affection each and every time.

The final heist is as ridiculous as an amateur heist could be. It is truly amazing that Bottle Rocket and Fargo were both released in the first months of 1996 and that one film could not have directly inspired the other. How else could the absurd misconduct of Dignan and Steve Buscemi’s Carl Showalter reflect the same ridiculous misunderstanding of the importance of masks and the value of awareness? But where Fargo damns its kidnappers, facing the darkest elements of their psyche, Bottle Rocket absolves them. Dignan/Wilson’s last lines in the film foreshadow the fall from innocence Anderson and Wilson would explore in their next, more well-regarded film, Rushmore.