The Phoenician Scheme, 202523 Images
If there were such a thing as “The Wes Anderson Scheme”, it would involve accidentally becoming one of the world’s most famous filmmakers, doubling down on your most ornate, esoteric tendencies, and then smuggling your latest arthouse curio into multiplexes around the world. In an age when theatres and non-IP stories of a certain budget are dying, Anderson seems to be shooting original features on 35mm for the big screen faster than ever, each of them more intricate than the last. In fact, the more idiosyncratic Anderson gets as a director – remember Asteroid City? – the more famous the actors queuing up for a cameo.
After all, the lead character in The Phoenician Scheme, Anderson’s fourth film in five years, is Zsa-zsa Korda, a crooked businessman whose name is a reference to Zsa Zsa Gabor and Alexander Korda, the latter a movie producer who died in 1956. It’s a joke that will escape many cinephiles, even though it can be unfairly considered normie to be a die-hard Wes-head these days. In a way, Anderson is a victim of his own success: his recognisable aesthetic, whether it’s the deadpan dialogue or precise camera movements, has led to endless imitators, none of whom can capture the magic of Rushmore or The Life Aquatic. However, The Phoenician Scheme is laugh-out-loud hilarious, unexpectedly heartfelt, and easily Anderson’s best film since The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Ditching the fractured, abbreviated story structure of his last few efforts, Anderson centres The Phoenician Scheme around Benicio del Toro, a 58-year-old Puerto Rican actor typically known for gritty crime-thrillers like Sicario, 21 Grams, and Traffic. As Korda, a scarred, stony-faced antihero, del Toro is in almost every scene, his statuesque frame growing wearier and more blood-stained as the attempts on his life accumulate. Even before the opening titles, Korda survives a plane crash but witnesses a fellow passenger explode; as Korda falls into the dirt, the reminder of his mortality is literally grounding.
“Wes wants the actors to be as honest as they can be in front of the camera,” del Toro tells me in a London hotel room, sat next to his co-star, Michael Cera. “That’s the bottom line with Wes. You respect the words, but you have to bring your honesty to it.”
“Wes would show us an animatic of the film, so it was clear what he wants, rhythmically,” says Cera, the 36-year-old Canadian actor from Superbad, Arrested Development, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. “In the early days of rehearsal, Wes would go, ‘OK, that’s ten per cent of the speed we need.’”
They had to recite the dialogue ten times faster?
“There’s a lot to get through,” says Cera. “Think about it: if we didn’t take half the time to say the lines, the movie would be twice as long.”
It’s 1950 when Korda, a business magnate with a foe in every area code, turns to his ten children – nine sons, one estranged daughter – to pick an heir, ultimately selecting Liesl. A nun who suspects Korda of murdering her mother, Liesl is played with rich humanity by Mia Threapleton (yes, she’s Kate Winslet’s daughter). As a comic duo, del Toro and Threapleton delightfully bounce off each other’s contrasting rhythms, but then the hilarity is heightened by Cera entering the dynamic as Bjorn, a Norwegian tutor whose speciality subject is insects.
After casting del Toro in a supporting role in The French Dispatch, Anderson told the actor he would feature to some extent in The Phoenician Scheme. “He was very wise not to tell me that he was writing the film for me,” says del Toro. “I would have panicked.” Del Toro initially received the first 20 pages of the script, and then 20 more arrived. He soon realised Korda was the lead. “By page 60, I started to panic. But the fear is like a motivating pill. You perk up.”
Cera has somehow never collaborated with Anderson before, although he did have to drop out of Asteroid City to become a father. As Bjorn, Cera is responsible for the film’s biggest laughs, often for gags delivered with a Norwegian accent, and sometimes simply for hovering in the corner of the frame. Bjørn, glasses and all, is just funny. Cera recalls, “Wes sent me the script, and said, ‘Your character’s Bjørn. Do you want to help me make him better?’ I read it, and I was like, ‘How? It doesn’t need improvement.’”
Wes wants the actors to be as honest as they can be in front of the camera. That’s the bottom line with Wes
In a 2023 interview, Cera revealed that he met his wife in Paris, and, before they spoke, she assumed he was Swedish. Did that encourage him to play a Scandinavian character? “No,” says Cera. “That was just a wrong guess she made, because I was wearing a red hat.” The room, including the eavesdropping publicists out of view, burst into laughter. “In the animatic, Wes does all the voices, and he didn’t do an accent,” Cera continues. “It was only when we showed up that we had to discuss how to make it real.”
For most of the film, Korda travels with Liesl and Bjorn to convince business figures into helping him fund a transportation project. With Korda upping the charm while begging for money, it’s apparent that Anderson has made a film about filmmaking: this is how producers raise cash for movies that might not make a profit. It’s a jet-setting story that grants screen time for actors like Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Ayoade, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
At the film’s core, though, is a father-daughter drama. When del Toro and Cera quiz me on what I noticed on second viewing, I point to being able to focus more on the emotional storyline. “It’s like Jenga,” says del Toro. “If you take away one line, the whole thing collapses. Wes and I agreed to take out some sections of dialogue, but then I’d go back to him and say, ‘We need it. It’ll help the ending.’”
Del Toro expresses gratitude that I saw the film twice in a cinema. “If you’re watching on your phone, you’re not going to see the subtle looks,” he says. “On the big screen, everything is magnified, and it turns the audience into insects. You see the details of not only the acting, but the sets and the production.”
And the literal insects?
“The centipede that’s crawling around after the crash,” says del Toro, suddenly beaming. “I always see it! I wouldn’t if I was watching on my phone.”
With only time for one question left, I’m hovering over my serious query regarding research for Korda, but instead opt for something I don’t think a journalist has ever asked Cera: how did he come to play guitar and sing backing vocals on the 2010 Weezer song “Hang On”?
“You played guitar for Weezer?” says del Toro to Cera in astonishment.
“Weezer were a big band for me,” says Cera. “My girlfriend, who I was in love with in high school, put me onto Weezer, so the band got deeply tattooed onto me, and still is. I had lunch with Rivers Cuomo one day, and I picked him up from where he was working. There was no plan for me to work on that song, but he was like, ‘Why don’t you do this guitar thing?’ He wanted to have a mandolin sound, which he achieved by slowing the tape down. It’s an old Beatles trick. You do the song in half-speed. I played guitar, and when it’s sped back up, the guitar is an octave higher.”
“You’re like Clapton,” says del Toro.
“Yeah,” says Cera. “I was strumming basic chords, but it’s sped up to have a mandolin effect.”
The interview is meant to be over but del Toro and Cera still have Weezer thoughts to express. Del Toro learns that in Paper Heart Cera takes out a guitar and sings a Weezer B-side.
“I love Weezer,” says Cera. “I was talking to Benicio about Weezer the other day. The opening shot, when Benicio is in the bathtub, and that slow-motion effect Wes does – when they’re performing it, they had to go really quickly to achieve the right feeling. Weezer did the same trick with Spike Jonze for ‘The Sweater Song’. The playback was double speed, but he filmed it in slow motion. So they’re playing the song at the right tempo but in slow motion. It’s a strange effect.”
“I know Weezer, but I’m not like him,” says del Toro. “I’ve got to find a girlfriend to tattoo my heart with Weezer.”
The Phoenician Scheme is out in UK cinemas now.
