Wes Anderson 101: The True Skill Beneath of the Surface of 'The Phoenician Scheme'

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Marvel and Star Wars are popular brands, but no modern director has a style more familiar to today’s moviegoers than Wes Anderson. In the three decades since his first feature Bottle Rocket, Anderson has cultivated a distinct visual style that anticipated today’s vibe-based entertainment landscape. His intricate tableaux, vivid colors, and deadpan characters convey the sort of instantly-recognizable details that thrive in the ephemeral world of internet memes and rapid-fire clips.

From the popular Instagram account “Accidentally Wes Anderson,” which showcases real-life scenery that looks as though it has been lifted from the filmmaker’s oeuvre, to the zillions of tributes and imitations across TikTok and YouTube, the ubiquity of Anderson’s aesthetic has taken on a life of its own.

Anderson has claimed ignorance of the imitators. “Please do not send me memes of people doing me,” he told the London Times in 2023. It’s easy to understand his resistance, as such amusing mimicry obscures the real substance of Anderson’s work and what gives it such enduring power.

The late film critic Andrew Sarris saw Anderson as one of a kind, describing his filmmaking as taking place in a “well-mannered, good natured world” where “grace transcends purpose.” Sarris went on to describe a “counterpoint between sadness and gaiety” at the root of Anderson’s work. His movies bemoan a bygone era of romanticism and sophistication. Sarris deemed Anderson “the last of the genuine continentals” and concluded that “we shall never see his like again.”

OK, so Sarris wasn’t actually writing about Anderson there.

The above quotes come from The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929 – 1968, Sarris’ seminal tome outlining the filmmakers he felt adhered to “the auteur theory.” Yet his entry on screwball comedy director Ernst Lubitsch, who died 20 years before the book’s publication, may as well apply to Anderson. In Lubitsch and Anderson alike, melancholy lingers beneath the sense of fun, and deepens its emotional appeal.

With his zippy dialogue and playful storytelling that obscured darker themes, Lubitsch was the progenitor of Anderson’s signature approach. It’s possible to enjoy the speed and attitude of a Lubitsch movie while almost unconsciously ingesting its deeper implications about human behavior. Lubitsch’s characters are compelled by self-interest until they inevitably stumble across some measure of empathy, a trajectory found throughout Anderson’s work.

Anderson has acknowledged as much over the years, and said Lubitsch’s frisky 1932 jewel thief comedy Trouble in Paradise (which screened as part of the Playhouse’s inaugural “The Spirit of 1932” series in February) had a “perfect tone. … I don’t know if anyone can make a movie like that anymore.” But Anderson certainly has tried, and in the process, forged his own unique variation on the Lubitsch Touch. His characters struggle with loss, broken relationships, and changing worlds. They often feel hopeless and isolated. But there’s a charming innocence to their surroundings that makes the grim undercurrents more bearable.

The Phoenician Scheme is Anderson’s twelfth feature and his most intimate in some time. It follows the meta-narrative of Asteroid City and the busy period anthology of The French Dispatch, not to mention his slew of short-form Roald Dahl adaptations available on Netflix as both short films and a feature (one of which, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, won Anderson his only Oscar). While The Phoenician Scheme contains a cartoonish energy that never slows down, it returns Anderson to the bittersweet family dynamics he explored in early successes such as Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums.

In this case, the zaniness centers around a poignant father-daughter dilemma. At its center, wily arms dealer Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) survives an outlandish airplane assassination attempt and declares his intention of forging a bond with his estranged daughter, Sister Liesl (delightful newcomer Mia Threapleton). The ensuing caper finds the pair careening through a series of misadventures with oddball characters cropping up along the way (including Michael Cera with a ridiculous Swedish accent, the source of which leads to a hilarious punchline).

There are times when The Phoenician Scheme plays like a debaucherous Looney Tunes cartoon, though it also channels the spirit of the Marx brothers in its absurdist vision of the fictional country of Phoenicia, which could easily share a border with the invented banana republic of Freedonia in Duck Soup. Korda’s plot to overtake the infrastructure of Phoenicia for his own economic gain doesn’t quite add up, which is kind of the point: He’s more driven by conceiving of devious schemes than executing them, and his downfall is inevitable.

Through it all, Anderson maintains a quiet tension between Korda and his daughter that grounds the movie in authentic stakes. Sister Liesl doesn’t trust her father for obvious reasons, but in the process of attempting to bring her into his world, he starts to realize that he belongs more in hers.

The Phoenician Scheme inhabits the perspective of a wistful man struggling with the kind of world he might leave behind for his heir. Given that Anderson has a nine-year-old daughter, it’s hard to ignore the autobiographical implications of the plot.

The personal components of Anderson’s filmmaking enrich the shiny visuals and heighten their appeal. His films are a reminder that every polished surface is an invitation to look deeper. “I feel like the characters from one of my films could walk into another of my films and fit into that world,” Anderson said in a recent interview. And that world is always worthy of further exploration.

The Phoenician Scheme is now playing at the Southampton Playhouse. Showtimes are available here.