Every Wes Anderson film is a major event on the cinematic calendar. It’s not merely the film that is played in cinemas and you saunter along on a Friday night to see it as big as possible; a whole world emerges around it and the immersive lore draws you in with its irresistible whimsy.
The Phoenician Scheme is a film whose roots snake back to the premiere of The French Dispatch in Cannes, where Anderson mentioned to one of his many stars, Benicio del Toro (at that point a Wes World debutant), that he had another project in the pipeline that he’d be keen to collaborate on. Whisk on four years, one feature (Asteroid City), a handful of shorts (including Oscar-winning The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar), and del Toro is suited, booted and very bruised as the most charming arms dealer in cinema history, Zsa-zsa Korda.
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Styled after the great Luis Buñuel (in both his style choices and his grappling with spiritual morality), Zsa-zsa is initially seen piloting a sabotaged plane as it plummets to earth. He miraculously survives the crash and then decides its high time he put his legacy in order. Enter Sister Liesl (Mia Threappleton), his estranged daughter who is now a woman of the cloth and duly appalled by her father’s activities. He explains to her his “scheme” and assures that upon completion she will be shot of him and have her birthright. With Michael Cera’s Norwegian insect scholar Bjorn along for the ride, we’re finally set for adventure.
The Phoenician Scheme is a film obsessed with ephemera, objects and art, possibly more so than any Anderson film before it. We have jumped on this intriguing design aspect and made an issue collecting together books, film, art and music. And for this issue, in the spirit of this overwhelmingly tactile, physical filmmaker, we have included an array of handmade artwork of the type where you can see the human fingerprints on each piece.
