What’s Going On?

International businessman, arms manufacturer and all-around cad Zsa-Zsa Korda survives another assassination attempt while planning his greatest project to date (the titular “Phoenician Scheme”). After this latest attempt, he reconnects with his daughter, Liesl, who is on the verge of becoming a nun. Korda is an eccentric, free-thinking individual with seemingly little time for conventional family life, or conventional anything. Korda wants to name Liesl his sole heir…on a trial basis, the trial being as they complete the Phoenician Scheme. Also present is Bjorn, an entomologist, as Korda likes to have an expert on hand for quiet moments when he can learn about something.

The trio of Kodor, Liesl and Bjorn (who also now serves as administrative secretary) take off in Korda’s seemingly endless supply of planes to finalise the scheme and most importantly cover “The Gap”.

In Front Of The Camera

The film features a cavalcade of perennial Anderson actors in minor roles – Willem Defoe, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson but the central cast consists of Benicio Del Toro as Korda (who has previously only appeared in one Anderson film The French Dispatch), Mia Threapleton as Liesl and Michael Cera as Bjorn.

Behind The Scenes

The director Wes Anderson is one of the most celebrated directors working today; his previous films include The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. That said, whilst his charming eccentric style is loved by many, others find it pretentious and light on substance. It is safe to say that The Phoenician Scheme is adding to his stock of eccentric and divisive films.

The film is co-written by frequent Anderson collaborator Roman Coppola (son of cinematic giant Francis Ford Coppola), who is known primarily for his music videos and working with Anderson.

Does It Work?

The Phoenician Scheme is a very enjoyable comedy adventure of Korda constantly trying to do the impossible; scheming, plotting, lying, and liberally giving out hand grenades to potential business partners. Del Toro is an almost unstoppable force in the film; his character has survived numerous assassination attempts and plane crashes (which were likely assassination attempts) and has a “habit of surviving”. Korda is as much an anti-hero as you’re going to get in an Anderson film but as he puts increasing importance on his relationships with others – particularly Liesl, and less on his schemes he becomes increasingly likeable.

Whilst Korda is busy on his scheme, we see glimpses into a room of besuited bureaucrats seemingly running a sabotage campaign against Korda for America and its allies. The matter of fact emotionless discussion of their plans is a different tone to the larger than life shenanigans of Korda and the three minute explanation of an everyday screw is a highlight. We also see glimpses into an almost biblical scene of judgement, in black and white with everyone, including Korda, looking like they had stepped out of an ancient world morality play that is seemingly only taken place in Korda’s head as he contemplates his life and actions.

There are the typical Wes Anderson stylistic choices. The actual scheme is laid out to Liesl via a series of boxes – shoe boxes, glove boxes, shirt boxes, etc., each containing different parts of the plan and are arranged and viewed in the neat and symmetrical style of Anderson. The costumes are fantastic and ridiculous and Liesl’s transformation from dressing like a nun to dressing like a more stylish and secular nun is amusing to watch in the little pieces of flair that are added.

The film’s greatest strength is Del Toro’s performance. He captures the spirit of an unstoppable, almost unkillable figure, who is constantly moving and dealing with assassinations, spy conspiracies, unhappy business partners and unhappier familial relations. Threapleton is very believable as the conflicted religious young woman who, nevertheless, is somewhat enchanted by Korda, relentlessly pressing on him to be a better person (for example, actually being a father to his eight sons). Liesl’s relationship with Korda is very complicated, in part because he hasn’t seen her in years, in part because of their wildly different moral stances, but mainly because it is widely believed that Korda murdered her mother. Michael Cera as Bjorn is almost dull as a character but his love and enthusiasm of his subject matter – bugs – whilst events of international importance and very real danger swirl around him, wins you over.

Like most of Wes Anderson’s films, there must be two reviews of this film, one for fans of Anderson and one for everyone else. Some are brilliant and so rise above this need but The Phoenician Scheme does not.

Rating: (4 / 5) (For Anderson fans)

Rating: (3 / 5) (For those with no particular attachment of Anderson)

Also Read: The Unique Style of Wes Anderson

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Spoiler Alert – spoilers ahead for Andor, Bojack Horseman, Face/Off, Death of Stalin, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Darjeeling Limited.

Andor – “Rix Road”

The funeral of Maarva Carassi in Andor is an astonishing scene. A pillar of her local community people have turned out in droves, carrying out the customs of the area, including the deceased’s ashes being turned into a brick to be used in a building. However, the funeral is not without incident, with a holographic Maarva delivering a stirring call to action against the Empire. When an Imperial officer tries to turn off the projector another character hits him with a brick – the brick made from Maarva. Yes, at her funeral she instigated a riot and her ashes were used to beat the tar out of the henchmen of a totalitarian state.

Funeral rating 5 out of 5 bricks made of ashes

Bojack Horseman – “Free Churro”

This is an episode of the animated comedy show Bojack Horseman, the entire episode of which is dedicated solely to Bojack’s eulogy to his mother at her funeral. Now, to those not familiar with the show Bojack and his mother didn’t get along. The flashbacks throughout the show impart the horror she put him through as a child, constant cruelty, belittling and criticism. The episode title comes from a story Bojack tells at the eulogy that on his way to the funeral he got a free churro from a drive-through when he said his mother had died when they asked him how he was. Bojack doesn’t hold back in his eulogy, describing his mother’s flaws, his own, and so much of the awfulness of their relationship.

Funeral Rating 4 out of 5 free churros

Face/Off

An odd film of dubious artistic merits but it does have a classic John Woo style shoot out with doves, slow motion and all-around ridiculousness. It is hard to overstate the absolute sheer spectacular oddity of this scene, a film famous for encouraging Nicholas Cage to go Peak Weird Nicholas Cage and then throwing elaborately choreographed gun battles into the mix. There are shots of doves flying around paintings of the Virgin Mary while slow motion bullets erupt from guns. It wouldn’t be a sombre respectful funeral but it would be memorable.

Funeral Rating 2 out of 5 slow-motion flocks of doves

Wes Anderson

There are several funerals and memorials in Anderson’s films. There is the funeral of Royal Tenenbaum that ends The Royal Tenenbaums, with his tombstone given the epitaph “saving his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship” – which is not at all how he died. Or Monsieur Gustave going to pay his respects to Dowager Countess Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis in The Grand Budapest Hotel, congratulating her on her appearance despite being dead. Perhaps the most memorable is the funeral scene in The Darjeeling Limited. Three brothers have set off across India to find their mother and on the way witness a river accident where a child dies (they manage to save the others). The family ask the brothers to attend the funeral, which they do, which gives one of the great Anderson music moments, Strangers by The Kinks playing as they walk towards the funeral. Then the film cuts to the brothers attending the funeral of their father – or failing to, desperate to drive their father’s beloved car to the funeral the three brothers descend on the garage where it is being fixed, in a state of some agitation.

Funeral Rating – 3 out of 5 Symmetrical Funerals

Death of Stalin

Unsurprisingly this film features the lying in state and funeral of Joseph Stalin, and a surreal experience it is too. Whilst mourners walk past in droves the various senior members of the government form an honour guard around the dictator’s body and just bicker and plot. They argue about bishops and religion but as none of them are facing each other to talk, who ordered what is utterly lost in the confusion? The plot against Beria, the head of the KGB, is finalised while they’re literally carrying Stalin’s coffin.

Funeral Rating – 4 out of 5 communist dictators lying in state (but don’t want to congratulate Stalin so 0).

Also Read: The Unique Style of Wes Anderson

The post Epic Farewells: The Art of Memorable On-Screen Funerals appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Fast & Furious – Martin Scorsese

The bizarrely successful Fast & Furious franchise has been around for 20 years and there are nine or ten (depending on how you count them) films already made. Scorsese could easily whittle that down to three long ones, with a de-aged Robert De Niro having a career as a street racer/criminal over decades. A de-aged Joe Pesci could play his wild friend/rival who takes too many risks when driving and Leonardo Di Caprio entering late in the trilogy as the undercover cop and/or Howards Hughes-style billionaire inventor wanting to make the fastest car in the world out of wood. The physics-defying antics of the films are replaced with short but extremely violent outbursts of criminal behaviour and the soundtrack is overwhelmingly The Rolling Stones.

Twilight – David Cronenberg

A story with as many different monsters and peculiar goings-on as the Twilight series could be brought to cinema in many different ways. The story already contains so much potential for body horror: people transform into monsters, vampires drink blood, there are unusual pregnancies and unusual childhoods, and who better than David Cronenberg to capture the horrific madness of it all? Obviously, throw in Viggo Mortensen somewhere but it would be fine keeping Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who have both shown a willingness to take on very interesting roles, with both appearing in Cronenberg films. Twilight received some criticism from monster fans in that vampires didn’t seem much like vampires, werewolves could change form at will in quite an unspectacular way, but Cronenberg would certainly provide more visceral creatures. The Fly is famous for the transformation of its scientist protagonist, Shivers a controversial and early foray into body-horror and with Rabid touching upon themes of vampires and zombies but in an utterly terrifying and horrific to watch way.

American Pie – Greta Gerwig

The awful American Pie franchise has dated about as bad as it is possible to date, with so many of the “jokes” just being truly awful things happening. A coming-of-age comedy franchise that follows the cast into adulthood has a lot of potential and Greta Gerwig can do this brilliantly. Lady Bird was set in the early 2000s, not long after American Pie was released, and Little Women – admittedly set in the 1860s but does prove she’s not limited to one setting. Instead of being a gross-out sex comedy based on the horrid treatment of women it could be something more intelligent, funnier and in every way just better.

Judging on Gerwig’s other films it’s fair to imagine that these films would focus more on young women than young men, but something like Timothy Chalamet’s pretentious but awful teenager from Lady Bird could be added very easily.

Mad Max – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

An observant reader might have noticed some shade being gently tossed towards some of the previous franchises but there shall be none for Mad Max. But to take something already good and do something interesting you have to really change things up. So Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s brand of anarchic inventive joy could transform the brutal post-apocalypse into a far more bizarre and “fun” place. The question of whether the film should be animated or not (and if so, based on Lego) is an interesting one but it would be great to see the aesthetic of something like Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs brought to a non-animated Mad Max.

Also Read: The Unique Style of Wes Anderson

Also Read: Quentin Tarantino Directing A Star Trek Film? Here’s What It Would’ve Been Like

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A Fantastic Acting Troupe

Anderson has established an impressive list of actors who repeatedly appear in his films. Most prominent would be Bill Murray – appeared in all except Bottle Rocket – but frequent collaborators include Jason Schwartzman, Owen and Luke Wilson, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton…I could go on. This collection of brilliant actors aside I put forth that Anderson gets amazing things from his actors. The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s third film, contains the best performance of most of the cast – Ben Stiller, Gwenyth Paltrow, Owen and Luke Wilson have never been better in anything else. Paltrow, an actor I do not usually like, is sensational in this film, Stiller brings a sense of sadness to this role I’ve never seen him duplicate. For me, it even ranks highly among screen legend Gene Hackman’s performances. Ralph Fiennes was robbed of an Oscar when he didn’t win for Monsieur Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel (and yes I know he wasn’t even nominated) bringing both tragedy and comedy to the performance.

Rich People

Most of Anderon’s characters seem to be quite well-off. The Tenenbaums’ “jobs” all seem like things they only do because they enjoy them rather than need the cash, despite complaining about money Steve Zissou has a submarine and an island, in The Darjeeling Limited the family have some unspecified wealth that allows them to enjoy neverending holidays. Even in Rushmore, a film about Max Fischer from a family of reduced means is surrounded by privileged people and attends a school that seems to have it’s own light aircraft.

Beautiful and Distinctive Design

I could simply spend all of this article writing about the pleasingly symmetrical world of Anderson’s films but I can’t really justify that, suffice to say, there is a lot of it. Aside from symmetry, Anderson’s films are immaculately designed, costumes are amazing (characters are often like cartoon characters in that they wear the same outfit constantly), indeed the three Tenenbaum children seem very much trapped in their costumes. The Grand Budapest Hotel is probably the greatest example of this, every costume is brilliant, every set stunning, and everything down to the smallest detail is carefully chosen. Fantastic Mr. Fox deviates a lot from the book but a lot of Mr. Fox’s den is based on things from Roald Dahl’s house, that is how far Anderson is willing to go.

The Perfect Song

I honestly don’t think there’s anyone better at using music in films. He has this uncanny knack of perfectly pairing scene and music, for example -Margot getting off a bus to meet Richie while These Days by Nico plays, then there is Richie’s suicide attempt set to Needle In The Hay, the wild montage of Margot’s romantic life set to Judy is a Punk or the truly heart-breaking scene of Margot and Richie listening to The Rolling Stones as they discuss love and suicide. And yes, those examples are all from one film – The Royal Tennenbaums, this does not include the countless musical gems contained in the rest of his work.

A Bit Pretentious

A lot of what I’ve written about in Anderson’s films could be said to be style, it looks good, it sounds good, but to me his films are so much more. One thing Anderson and I have in common is that people have said we’re “a bit pretentious”. I think whenever you try to make a meaningful statement about life, art, love, friendship and a million other things you run the risk of being called pretentious and I think it’s a shame that so few directors are willing to risk this. Anderson’s films are emotional and try to make the viewer feel things. Few films have resonated with me as much as The Royal Tenenbaums, the relationship between Monsieur Gustave and Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of the most endearing in all of cinema and the lengths to which Max in Rushmore is prepared to go for love are astonishing. But all of the things I love in these films could be written off as pretentious. Themes that appear again and again are difficult family situations, unusual friendships, love between misfits, these are things everyone can relate to, even if the world they’re found in is not quite like our own.

What To Watch

Not everyone is going to like Wes Anderson, for me, he has made some of my favourite films, If you’re unfamiliar with his work I’d suggest starting with one of his latest films – The Grand Budapest Hotel, everything from the characters to the furniture is beautiful and it has more of a plot than a lot of his films.

Also Read: The Anatomy of a Christopher Nolan Film

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