There are two kinds of people in this world: those who like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and those who don’t. It is this reviewer’s humble opinion that The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was the turning point. The difference between quirky Wes Anderson and heart-warming Wes Anderson. It’s like the difference between fast food and home-cooked .And so, what of the filmmaker’s 13th feature, The Phoenician Scheme?
This is not just another exercise in dollhouse symmetry and precious melancholy; it’s something denser, richer, and strangely more grounded. The Phoenician Scheme may not fall into the accessible film category of Anderson’s arsenal, but it shows as he ages, his visions are becoming increasingly refined. A post-colonial farce set in an imagined North African port city teetering between luxury and revolt. Then there’s the weaving in of espionage blended with Anderson’s frequent existentialism and absurdity.
Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda with sly magnetism. This paranoid industrialist is convinced his empire is being slowly dismantled by unseen forces. He speaks bluntly whilst appearing strangely lyrical. Mia Threapleton is a great jousting partner as his cloistered daughter Liesl, bringing the deadpan humor and gentle dismay to the screen, somehow grounding the surrounding chaos.
Scarlett Johansson, as the sharply suited diplomat Hilda Korda, evokes a blend of Lauren Bacall cool and Andersonian ennui, while Michael Cera’s Bjorn, an entomologist with a case of moral vertigo, is brilliant to the point you wish he was featured in more of Anderson’s films. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Uncle Nubar plays like a droll ghost from a lost Graham Greene novel, and Tom Hanks, in his second outing with Anderson, is bone-dry and wonderfully menacing as Leland, a representative of the cryptic Sacramento Consortium.
(L to R) Mia Threapleton as Liesl and Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
“…a post-colonial farce set in an imagined North African port city teetering between luxury and revolt…”
Add Rupert Friend as Excalibur, a linen-draped revolutionary with a fondness for chamber music, Richard Ayoade as the stiff, soft-spoken commander of the guerrilla front; and Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, and Jeff Goldblum in delightfully oblique cameos, and you have a cinematic chessboard of mannered performances, each clicking perfectly into place.
Visually, the film is among Anderson’s most elegant. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel infuses the screen with hues of rust, ochre, and mint green, as if the entire film were lit by the pages of a 1970s travel brochure. Alexandre Desplat’s score shifts between Morricone-style grandeur and kitschy faux-exoticism, layering the scenes with ironic urgency.
There’s less sentimentality here than in Moonrise Kingdom, less operatic grandeur than The Grand Budapest Hotel. But what The Phoenician Scheme offers is subtle, mordant introspection about family, imperial rot, and the rituals we cling to in collapsing worlds. It’s about what a lot of Anderson’s films are about. Tortured genius, complicated parental figures, and the search for belonging to something in order to give one’s existence meaning.
Some viewers will accuse it of being as impenetrable as Asteroid City. But Wes Anderson, as ever, builds his world with such fastidious, surreal care that to dismiss it would be to miss the point. This isn’t just an aesthetic exercise. It’s a sandblasted fable about meaning and memory.
The Phoenician Scheme doesn’t ask you to love it. It dares you to look closer. And for those who do, the reward is quietly spectacular.
"…a sandblasted fable about meaning and memory."
