By Mark Fields
Can a Wes Anderson Movie Be Too Wes Anderson?
Full confession: I came to the Wes Anderson camp late. I found his earliest films – Bottle Rocket and Rushmore – distractingly mannered. It wasn’t until Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel that I came to appreciate the manner was the message. But with his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, I have to admit I’m wondering if it is possible for a Wes Anderson movie to be too Wes Anderson. In this case, for me the answer is yes.
The plot, to the degree I understand it, centers around a European business tycoon, Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benecio del Toro)’s attempts to rescue a complicated and failing project by visiting all his investors in an attempt to minimize his losses. Korda recruits his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), an aspiring nun, to help him in his quest. What follows is a largely disconnected vignettes with a progression of familiar actor faces (Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson) portraying thinly-drawn characters using corporate lingo that is uninterestingly dense.
Only two new actors to Anderson’s repertory company – Threapleton and Michael Cera as Liesl’s awkward suitor – manage to find some resonance with their characters. Most of the rest seem merely along for the ride with a director they admire.
All the Wes Anderson signatures are here in this film again: the self-conscious looks at the camera; the flat, brightly hued interiors shot from unexpected, often curious angles; the intentionally quirky and often-stilted dialogue; the discordant framing device through which the main story is told with a degree of distance; the recurring cast of many, many acclaimed actors even in miniscule parts. Whereas those Anderson tropes have worked, and charmingly, in the past, The Phoenician Scheme leaves me cold, although it’s unclear why.
Perhaps this movie lacks a strong narrative through-line seen in Anderson’s strongest films. Maybe the requisite whimsy is hampered by a lead actor with the natural gravitas of del Toro. Perhaps this story is just not interesting enough to support the idiosyncratic style to which Anderson naturally defaults. Or maybe, just maybe, his customary bag of tricks has exhausted its appeal. I hope not, but still wonder.
Official Trailer
