"The Phoenician Scheme": The Gates of Heaven, According to Wes Anderson

With his diorama-like compositions and stories of longing, usually for a loving family, Wes Anderson took audiences to almost every corner of the globe: Asia and Europe, New York and the American Southwest, a fox den and an island inhabited by dogs. With The Phoenician Scheme , he zigzags around the world again, but adds an unusual place to the list: the sky.

More precisely, the pearly gates, which stand just outside heaven, guarding the way so the unworthy don’t slip through. These scenes are actually fragments, rendered in black and white. In them, we repeatedly see the generally shady arms dealer and business tycoon Anatole Korda, aka Zsa-zsa ( Benicio Del Toro , who is perfect) , standing on clouds before a robed assembly the film presents as the “biblical company,” which includes F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hope Davis, and Bill Murray, who plays God delightfully.

The fact that all these screen luminaries apparently showed up on Anderson's set for a day to film a small scene is indicative of the position the auteur finds himself in at this point in his 31-year career. Still youthful in appearance, he has just turned 56 and has a slew of awards under his belt. He is synonymous with his intricate aesthetic, which is perhaps one of the most recognizable in cinema. This has made him a trademark, and social media creators and critics alike are drawn to examine and imitate it. In 2018, he curated an exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and while The Phoenician Scheme was premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, it was the subject of an exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris.

He's also built his career around an ever-expanding universe of collaborators and recurring actors. While some, like Murray, have been around for a long time, del Toro is a relative newcomer to the group, as The Phoenician Scheme is only his second film with Anderson (he had a role as a seductive criminal in The French Chronicle ).

He plays the cold and distant Korda, who, after surviving his sixth assassination attempt, finally admits he needs to name an heir to his business and his vast fortune. He has nine children living in a care home across the street—Korda isn't a very good father—but he also has a daughter he doesn't relate to, Liesl ( Kate Winslet's impassive, chain-smoking daughter Mia Threapleton ), who's about to take her vows at a convent. Liesl's moral compass is as upright as her father's is utilitarian, and when he lays out his plan to her, she senses he might be able to do some good even if she doesn't trust him.

So he convinces him to adopt a somewhat higher ethical stance regarding his, shall we say, grand plan, the details of which are laid out so quickly and superficially that it becomes quite clear Anderson doesn't care whether we actually understand what Korda wants to do. Despite its title, this isn't a film about a scheme, but about the man with that scheme and, more importantly, about his soul.

In fact, it's a rather soul-obsessed film, the kind of film typically made by artists who have recently pondered the meaning of life. I can't guarantee that this is what Anderson was doing, but I can confirm that this is the first of his films to explicitly address the religious quest.

As Korda and Liesl travel the world trying to secure funding for their scheme, they meet a number of Korda's acquaintances, associates and relatives, who reveal something about his business dealings and past life. These include, among others, a prince (Riz Ahmed), two brothers ( Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), a nightclub owner with the charming nickname Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a guy named Marty (Jeffrey Wright), militants led by a man named Sergio (Richard Ayoade), and finally, two members of Korda's own family: his utopian second cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson) and his spiteful Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Yes, that's a lot of names. And they're not even all there. And that highlights The Phoenician Scheme's biggest problem: it's overstuffed, and therefore skims and slides across the surface of everything it touches, only giving a glimpse here and there before moving on to the next moment in the story, the next exquisitely detailed composition. It would have needed a respite or two, or ten, a moment to contemplate what the film wants to say. Sometimes it feels like it's afraid to look too deeply at itself.

However, that reflects how Korda lived his life, up until Liesl shows up. With each visit to solicit new funding, some aspect of Korda's life is briefly revealed, and Liesl gains a better insight into who her father really is. She also talks to him about God, religion, and kindness, and to the tutor Korda hires to travel with him and sustain his intellectual interest. The current tutor, Bjorn Lund, is an entomologist, so he's always talking about insects; plus, he's played by Michael Cera, who for some reason never appeared in a Wes Anderson film. Thank goodness he joined that particular cinematic universe.

Korda, preternaturally calm about everything, faces his past with outward poise, but there is a growing unease within him. Between these scenes, we see him at the pearly gates, experiencing the difficulties that might await him in the afterlife. It is as if the growing self-knowledge, brought on by the presence of

Liesl in her life, was causing the long-awaited awakening of her consciousness.

And that brings us to the big question the film poses, when you can see beyond all the noise: Can a man like Korda be both great and good? Or are the two incompatible? Is it necessary to exploit everyone around him to conquer the world and amass a fortune? (One of Liesl's innovations in her scheme is to prohibit the use of slave labor, for example.) Or, to quote a book Liesl loves, what real benefit does it gain if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

One of Korda’s lifelong mottos is “if something gets in your way, squash it,” a slogan that sounds suspiciously similar to the kind of advice given by TikTok gurus or tech executives with a loose ethic. But the higher you go, the flatter everything below seems. It’s easy to forget all those human beings down there. Greatness and success, The Phoenician Scheme suggests, are all very well. But there’s a joy that comes from returning to the three-dimensional world, to a place where you pray or cook, where a shot of whiskey and a game of cards with friends at the end of a long day means love.