Before The French Dispatch (2021), Wes Anderson’s last truly great work, he was releasing a new film every two to three years on average. Now he has made three films (including a compendium of shorts) in the past three years.
This increase in productivity, unfortunately, seems to be directly correlated with a decline in quality. I don’t think Anderson is meant to work with the reliability and regularity of Woody Allen or Hong Sangsoo. In fact, it appears that his style of filmmaking is actually far more suited to a much longer development, realisation and gestation time.
With his latest project, The Phoenician Scheme (2025), an exceptionally busy and convoluted work, a picaresque collection of dialogues that never immerses us into a particular time or place, we finally see him put attitude above aesthetics; even above feeling. This is his first truly inessential work.
Benecio Del Toro stars as Zsa-zsa Korda, a scheming businessman constantly at the end of a series of dastardly assassination attempts across mid-century Eurasia. In a whipsmart opening — promising a proper spy yarn instead of the slog to follow — the hull of his private plane blasts open, eliminating his administrative assistant and forcing him to enter the cockpit, fire his pilot (in a very humorous way) and make the seventh crash landing of his career.
Concerned that his rogue exploits will lead to his demise sooner rather than later, putting his entire business operation at risk, he summons his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), for a meeting. She has been taken on as a novice and believes her father to have killed her mother, yet agrees to tag along with him “for a trial period” to then finally decide as to whether or not she wants to inherit the family business. With the Norwegian tutor Bjorn (a brilliantly-suited Michael Cera) in tow, the three of them get up to various hijinks across the fictional country of Phoenicia, with Korda attempting slyly humorous methods to get his business partners to provide the money for his ambitious construction project. The resultant meetings pile up one after the other, each less entertaining than the last.
The cameos are endless and exceptionally enervating. Countless famous faces (including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray and more) are wasted, reaching an apotheosis with F. Murray Abraham’s dialogue-free close-up, a wordless gimmick inserted simply to flex Anderson’s ability to command huge casts instead of existing for any true meaning. It’s as if the more popular — and populated — Anderson’s work has become, the less vital his works are. It’s giving Marvel Phase 4.
It’s extremely frustrating. The usual style is in order here, making it, at least from scene to scene, a diverting watch. But this is the first time I felt that the style wasn’t serving anything. It was just there for its own sake. So by the time Korda and his daughter attempt a resolution, I no longer felt like it was deserved by the supporting story at all.
It’s painful because I love Wes Anderson. His trademark tics — planimetric compositions, symmetrical designs, meticulous mise-en-scène, pastel colour palettes, whip pans, crash zooms — make his movies feel totally unique; inspiring countless parodies and propelling entire careers modelled exclusively on his fussy aesthetic.
Yet the one thing parodists — or god forbid, soulless AI programs — cannot successfully copy is his deadpan voice, comic timing and long-lasting concerns on the nature of family and the futility of obsession. Despite everything, he is a one-of-a-kind auteur, with films that look basically unlike anything else in cinema. Even missteps such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Asteroid City (2023) feel like the visions of a singular mind — the former filled with incredible aquatic imagery and the latter a fascinating exploration of Americana — worthy of appreciation within his wider filmography.
The problem with The Phoenician Scheme is that it’s the first Wes Anderson film that looks less like an original vision and more like a student homage; a series of sketches in search of a movie instead of a proper cohesive work. While AI could never come close to this, I think a skilled imitator could. And that’s a scary thought; one of America’s greatest directors disappearing under the influence of his own style. Let’s hope he takes some more time until his next work.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.