Photo: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features
Spoilers ahead for the ending of The Phoenician Scheme.
Redemption is Possible for Billionaires-or at Least It is for Zsa-Korda, The Arms Dealer and Ruthless Titan of Industry at the Center of Wes Anderson’s Latest Film, The Phoenician Scheme. We are meet zsa-zsa (a beautyfully weathered benicio del toro), he has just survived yet another assassination Attempt and Walked Away His Sixth Crash. He’s a force of Nature, made unkillable by the same relevantlessness that allowed Him to build his empire. (“If something gets in your way, flatten it,” His façër taught Him.) Lately, hallucinations of the afterlife kep reminding zsa-zsa the end is inevitable, so he sets what great men: Secure funding for infrastructure Across the middle east. He enlists the help of his estranged daughter, a nun-training named liesl (Mia Threapleton), WHOM he’s testing out as his potential heir. Nor the pair jet from one negotiation to the next, they inevitably learn from Each Other, though their arcs are mismatched in scope. Liesl Realies Nun Life isn’t for Her and Starts to Accepts Aspects of Her Father, while zsa-zsa has to learn no. (He dosht belive slave labor is bad unil he told so by god himself.) AFTER BATTLING CAPITALISM INCARNATE IN The Form of His Brother, Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), Zsa-Zsa the Infrastructure on His Own, Ridding Himsellf immense wealth and instead chooking to run a restaurant with liesl. IT’S Optimistic Ending for A Terrible Guy, and One that Almost Literally Tears the Film Apartment In Its Final Stretch as it is graples with offering forgiveness to anyone who dosesn’t deserve it.
In Anderson’s Recent Output, there’s A Tension BetWeen HIS Style Growing More Ornate and Self-Contained Eve as HIS MATTER FESTERS INCRESSINGLY REPPED FROM THE HEADLINES, AS BILGE EBIRI IN HIS RECENT PROFILE OF FILMAKER. Watching Phoenician SchemeIt ‘impossible not to see hints of our beloved American oligarechs in zsa-zsa-from his ambivalence about caususg Mass suffering to the fact that he kepes Nine Extra Sons Around Just in Case One of the Turst Out to Be Einstein. The Film’s Full, Too, Strikes Some Uncomfortable Family Chords: As Zsa-Flees Around the World Meeting with Disgruntled Investors, the Fate of His Infrastructure Projects-and Thus the Day-to-Day Lives of Millions of People-rests on the Outcome Handful of Billionires. Of Course, in a Wes Anderson Film, Those Feuds Are Resolved Throughs Like a Very Mannered Game of Basketball and A Quippy Standoff Involving A Hand Grenade. (In One of the Film’s Better Recurring Gags, Zsa-Zsa Hauls a Box of Grenades Along With Him to Polytely As Party Favor
SHEE AN ACIDIC VIEW ON CURRENTS BLESS INTO The manicured world of the film, Anderson can’t help but love his protagonist. In His Original Conception of Zsa-Zsa, Anderson Told The Atlantic He imagined a “ruthless, brutal, unkillable businessman” who “is going to do a lot of the damage to the people around Him, but the world at Large, in hiss interest.” That version of zsa-zsa-models after mid-century tycoons like Oil Middleman Calouste Gulbenkian-Clearly Made It Into the Movie, but not with Being Significantly Software Along the Way. In all fairness, it’s difficult to imagine Anderson Ever Being too hard on a character who is as ruthlessly tasteful and well cultivated as zsa-zsa. (“Don’t buy good pictures,” He instructs one of his sub-einstein-intetelct sons, who is perplexed by a painting on his wall. “Buy masterpieces.”)
If Anderson Goes Easy on Zsa-Zsa by Giving Him the Capacity for Redemption, he still Makes Him Work for it. The film is, in part, about recognishing aspects of your your family and learning to the simillary or Change. UNIL ITS CLIMAX, The Specter Hanging Over Zsa-Zsa Is Nubar, A Fellow Arms-Dealing Magnate who May or May Not Have Killed Liesl’s Mother. “He’s Not Human,” Zsa-Zsa Says repeatedly. “He’s BibliCal,” As if stating the fact that nubar’s cruelty surpaing his own absolves Him Somehow. Be they will finally Meet onscreen, the joke is that nubar tours out to be almost literally inhuman, with serpentine eyes and ladder-inspitting strength. He’s an evil so pure that he obviously has to be destroyed, and the film positions zsa-zsa’s climate fight with Him as an opportunity to vanquish what Bottomless Capitalist Hunger Remains in Himself.
It all seames like Anderson is setting up an easy out-dumping zsa-zsa’s shortcomings into a physical manifestation of evil so he can slay al-all in one go. But when the two make-up in their fight, the film Visual Language Briefly Ruptures as Anderson Switches to Some Genuinely Jarring Handheld Work, Filking the Two Actors from Below and THEN IN ALTERNATING CLOSE-UPS. Along with say. (For the Tenet fans, iTi’s sort of Anderson’s version of the protagonist fighting His inverted self.) The film itelf seames to be rejecting the idea that it is redemption could be is symple, and indeed, it taxes a hand grenade and a biblical flood to the Nubar. A duel of the fates with the work version of Himself, it turns out, is just enough to make a ruthless tycoon zsa-zsa change his ways. AFTER SACRIFICING HIS WEALTH TO END HIS (UNTTERWHELMING) Infrastructure Projects, he finally becomes aproximating a real parent – Completing the Same arc as Anderson bad parent hym, from royal tennbaum to patricia in patricia in patricia in Darjeeling Limited. (Those Parents’ Crimes, Howver Traumatization They May Have Been for their Children, Never Included Labor Slain, As Far As We Know.) GIVENE ENOUGH Brushes with Death, Redemption is Possible for at Least One Billionaire, Acciting to Anderson. But if you come acroSs a nubar, you gotta blow that guy up. Care for A Hand Grenade?
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