At the core of his latest film, Anderson, along with co-writer Roman Coppola and leading man Benicio de Toro, has created a wonderfully entertaining antihero of contradictions: European yet eerily Trumpian, bigger than life yet soft spoken, bearing many passports yet without a fixed address, a self professed diplomat who carries a crate of hand-grenades — just in case they are needed. And more often than not, they are.
Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda has more lives than a cat. He has survived countless attempts on his life, although he remains unsure who wants him dead. As we watch him crash, and survive for the sixth time, after an explosion knocks a hole into his private plane leaving his secretary’s detonated bottom half buckled into the seat, we realize we know who Korda is. He is that perfect Euro-American antihero, the man who thinks everyone and every country is out there to serve his needs, a buyer of things and enslaver of human beings. He is absurdly bigger than life, and played brilliantly by Benicio del Toro and he’s a perfect Wes Anderson character, even if we’ve never seen anyone like him before in a film by the Texas-born filmmaker.
In The Phoenician Scheme though, Anderson and frequent collaborator and co-writer Roman Coppola, have made this Trumpian antihero go after a scheme, designed to rob an unnamed country in the Middle East — which on the map looks eerily like France — of its mostly untapped resources. He enlists the help of his just-named favorite heir, a 20-year old nun who happens to be Zsa-zsa’s daughter Liesl, and is played by Kate Winslet’s real-life daughter Mia Threapleton. Together, they travel on more airplanes, which may or may not explode in the air, to close “The Gap” — an amount Zsa-zsa describes as “a missing slice of a pie that was baked too big for the pan,” and, in money terms, “everything we got (our entire fortune) — plus a little bit more.” This amount will secure enough financing for his evil yet undeniably brilliant scheme, from his friends, collaborators and dubious relatives. The project, named the “Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme” is held in five and a half shoeboxes, and he’s accompanied on his travels by Liesl and Bjorn, Zsa-zsa’s Norwegian tutor and entomologist played to perfection by Michael Cera.
As you can probably tell already by reading this, there are so many cool references and inside jokes in Anderson’s latest masterpiece that your head will spin. Mine certainly did, it still does and I personally can’t wait to watch the film again. Because how I can be expected to catch them all in one sitting, and during a Cannes gala screening at that. The entrance of the cast alone was dizzying, as the film features cameos by Riz Ahmed, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Murray and Charlotte Gainsbourg — the latter wore a green number on the red carpet that looked incredible on her but would look like a worn, poorly sized sweatshirt on every other woman. Tom Hanks is featured in the film, but didn’t attend the screening in Cannes.
Apart from the cool line up of stars, which Anderson always manages to pull together so well, the end credits alone are a whole illustrated short film in themselves.
So back to Zsa-zsa, who is a bit Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s rich uncle, but also a touch Gianni Agnelli, the Italian FIAT tycoon in the way he dresses and because of his big hair, mixed with Euro millionaires of past eras Niarchos and Onassis. In the press kit for the film though, the most obvious of references for del Toro’s character is listed as Orson Welles. Yes, not just Charles Foster Kane, but also the mysterious titular character in Welles’ 1955 Mr. Arkadin — although I’d argue that the look of Gregory Arkadin is more like that of Zsa-zsa’s unsettling half-brother Nubar, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and a pair of prosthetic eyebrows. But more on him later! Oh, and throw in a bit of the spellbinding sociopath that is Harry Lime in The Third Man, another iconic Welles character.
The centerpiece of The Phoenician Scheme, the part that really attached itself to me in a profound way and has stayed in my heart and thoughts since, is the father-daughter relationship that emerges between Zsa-zsa and Liesl. While Zsa-zsa has many male children, by as many women, and Liesl is at first convinced that her father had her mother (Gainsbourg) murdered, there is immediately a chemistry that forms between the two which later turns into an undeniable bond. The ending is so charmingly beautiful that it made me wish my dad was still alive, just so we could make it work out between us. Now, not many films, actually less than a couple have done that to me, in my entire life.
For a lover of beautiful paintings, this also made me think of my Conservator of Paintings dad. In that sense, the film offers an extra layer of visual delight. “Never buy good pictures. Buy masterpieces,” Korda tells Liesl at one point and indeed, hanging about his home — inspired by Calouste Gulbenkian’s Paris house and a palazzo in Venice — as well as other interiors are the real deal, not copies. Paintings that include the Greta Garbo owned Renoir on loan from the Nahmad Collection, and a Magritte from the Pietzsch Collection. Filmed inside the Studio Babelsberg, in Potsdam, Germany, where the 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis was filmed, but also the stage where several scenes from The Grand Budapest Hotel, the setting adds to the cinematic history of the latest Anderson masterpiece.
This latest jewel of a film, which features a new collaboration for Anderson with French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, reminded me of the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2018, curated by the filmmaker and his writer-illustrator partner Juman Malouf. Combining different eras and influences, The Phoenician Scheme gives us Old Masters paintings, mixed in with influences from Árpád Plesch’s botanical bounty to Calouste Gulbenkian’s 6,000-piece collection, spanning BC to AD, and amassed in his own museum. All the way to the William Randolph private zoo, once the world’s largest, at San Simeon. And in the final sequence, the Egyptian Hotel done up as an Egyptian Revival space, complete with colorful hieroglyphics.
Not to be forgotten are the clothing and accessories featured in the film. A rosary from Cartier and a bejeweled pipe from Dunhill, both for Liesl, a nun who is “pious but not plain” enough for her vows. And a Prada backpack for Zsa-zsa. Costumes were the work of Anderson collaborator, Oscar winning Italian costume designer Milena Canonero while the production designer was Adam Stockhausen, with help from Art Curator Jasper Sharp for the paintings. And the eclectic score by Alexandre Desplat, along with some beautiful ol-timey hits like Jerry Horowitz’ Mud Bug and Dizzy Gillespie’s Night in Tunisia, but also pieces from Stravinsky’s ballets Petrouchka and The Firebird.
The film ends with a touching dedication to Juman’s father, Fouad Malouf, a Lebanese businessman, one which brings all the aspects of The Phoenician Scheme home — the MENA region, the father-daughter angle and the unbelievable, palpable love that Anderson pours into this latest of his masterpieces. In his press kit, Anderson points out: “This was somewhat inspired by Fouad’s circle of colleagues, and we had the idea that certain colleagues would specialize in certain tasks in this big infrastructure project: a shipping magnate, a kingdom, railroad men. He had his company, his team, and a series of colleagues. I asked him what they were like and he said: ‘All lions.’”
I said I would talk about Benedict Cumberbatch and, as a fan of his work, the film does pay homage to his greatness. Without overlooking anyone else, there are too many cool characters played by super cool and fave actors to name, Uncle Nubar is by far the most haunting. Fitted with thick furry eyebrows framing his light blue eyes and sporting a huge beard, Cumberbatch ties all the lose ends of the film, and brings home another never-before seen aspect in Anderson’s work. The presence of physical violence, which, perhaps because it’s filmed by a DoP the filmmaker called “darker” and due to the times we live in, is very strong in The Phoenician Scheme. For a lover of all things Anderson but also someone who follows the events of the Middle East closely and with a caring eye, this film really made me question the direction where we are going. And again, made me want to watch it again and again, to find within it a roadmap, not just for closing “The Gap” but to discover how we can all get along. For the love of cinema and humanity.
The film will be in cinemas starting on May 23rd.
Images courtesy of Universal/Focus Features, used with permission.