There’s a scene early on in the The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson’s latest burst of whimsy, where I became enamored with how the typeface was laid out. Now, one shouldn’t normally fixate on such elements, but in rare cases (Dr. Strangelove’s Pablo Ferro scribbles comes to mind, or perhaps the mid-film credit sequence in Gaspar Noé’s Climax, or, heck, the sublime logo curvature and oblique crawl that opens the Star Wars films) it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate.
Now, the font face isn’t some revelation, following the type of sans-serif looks that go back to his earliest films, from the Futura of his first works through to differing choices as he’s continued to evolve and ornamentalize. In The Phoenician Scheme, it’s a scene shot from above, as if Dogville by Lars Von Trier was shot in a papal palace instead of a chalk-outlined blank studio space, where we see a recovering Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), recovering in a bath as his servants deliver delicious looking scrambled eggs and care for his every need. It’s a gorgeous tableau (unsurprisingly, almost every frame in this film could be hung in a gallery like the masterpiece paintings that diagetically litter the spaces we see on screen), but it was the tiled floor and how it fit with the font that most amused, mere minutes in.
Now, fixating on this detail may seem somewhat silly, but I have to again articulate how perfect it all fits. The tiles on the (vast) bathroom floor are geometric diamonds highlighting black, grey, and white, and the type face listing the retinue of characters and primary crew members lays atop, perfectly, elegantly integrated. Black text, thin white outline, thicker grey outline atop again, as if the floors tiles themselves are shifting as each name enters the screen. There’s a warm feeling where even something as seemingly trivial as shifting credit text is somehow made sublime, a part of the space as carefully thought out as any of the myriad of other elements. It all fits together in visual ways that truly are cinematically cathartic.
And so, fans are treated to another of Wes Anderson’s wondrous adventures, this one surely among his most playful despite its often morbid situations. The story is amusingly convoluted, the tasks of the protagonists literally houses in shoe-box side compartments, each leading on a unique and yet connected adventure.
Korda is a rich business person looking to create a massive industrial and commercial development in a sand-filled region, but he needs an heir. Despite being seemingly immortal (even multiple plane incidents can’t deliver him to heaven’s embrace), he chooses his alleged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun with a sour face and disposition to match, embittered by her alleged father’s heretofore absentee parenting schema.
Looking on as the father and daughter connect is a hapless tutor named Bjørn Lund (Michael Cera), his thick Scandinavian accent redolent of the chef on The Muppet Show. Other members of ensemble include many Andersonian regulars, from Jeffery Wright, Bryan Cranston, Matheiu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright and Tom Hanks as fellow oligarchs, Scarlett Johansson as a cousin/potential spouse, Benedict Cumberbatch as an Uncle. Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Charlotte Gainsbourg, F. Murray Abraham, Richard Ayoade, Riz Ahmed and many others round out the cast, including, naturally, Bill Murray making an appearance as God.
With a story co-written by long-time collaborator Roman Coppola (who also serves at Executive Producer), it’s Anderson’s unique fingerprints that are all over this adventurous yet unabashedly silly tale. A first time collaboration with the iconic cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie, Inside Llewyn Davis), the 1.33:1 aspect ratio and glossy 35mm photography makes you want to lick the screen. Composer Alexandre Desplat adds in another dose of Francophilic exuberance, while many of the settings of the locations (mostly Babelsberg Studio outside of Berlin) give a slight Germanic tease to the décor under the guidance of the exceptional American production designer Adam Stockhausen.
It’s safe to say that Anderson’s ornate style of filmmaking isn’t for everyone, with many simply dismissive of the differences film to film and simply writing them all off as silly stuff. This is their loss, of course, and for those even casual fans there’s so much to admire here for the willing. Although this particular story shares some of Asteroid City’s surrealism and The French Dispatch’s immaculate sense of place, the stakes feel somewhat more lighthearted here despite a narrative that involves hand grenades, karate fights, family feuds, flaming crossbow bolts and discussions of the way to best employ slave labor.
The result is a kaleidoscope of kookiness, with scene after scene amping up the stakes to truly existential levels while still feeling like a series of playground hijinks (basketball net included). It’s a film that’s filled with so many wonderful moments that it’s a joy to behold, and even at its darkest it unfolds with a sense of radical frivolity. Del Toro chews the scenery with aplomb, yet it’s relatively newcomer Threapleton whose dour continence and sardonic air is the film’s greatest gift. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the daughter of Kate Winslet manages to shine on the big screen, but it’s here that she’s given a large enough canvas and broad enough set of circumstances to truly captivate.
The plot is nearly irrelevant, the titular scheme the biggest MacGuffin of many, but none of that matters as we jump aboard yet another doomed plane, or to sit around a table in a vast, castle-like space. Even the Ratatouille-like final moments feel both satisfying and unnecessary, the entire storyline either a carefully assembled mission or the wild dreams captured in the last moments before the airship hits the ground.
It’s this aspect that may be the most existentialist of all, where no matter what fortunes are gained or lost it is in the brief moments of great beauty that one can truly be said to live. There’s no specific genre to encapsulate all this film contains save for simply stating the truth: The Phoenician Scheme is another fine facet of Wes Anderson’s fabulous filmography, and we are all beneficiaries of this glorious fact.
Director: Wes Anderson Writer: Wes Anderson Stars: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis Release date: June 6, 2025
Jason Gorber is a Toronto based film Critic and Journalist, Editor-in-Chief at That Shelf, the movie critic for CBC’s Metro Morning, and others. He is a member of the Toronto Film Critics Association and voter for the Critics Choice Awards Association. He also knows for a fact that CASINO is Scorsese’s masterpiece, and has a cat named Zissou.
