The Phoenician Scheme is another masterstroke from Wes Anderson, his third in five years (The French Dispatch; Asteroid City). Excluding Scorsese, he’s our greatest living American director, and when it’s all said and done, I think he’ll be the more important artist.
This latest output is a tad more subdued than his previous two, but it shares their meticulous commitment to style—detractors be damned—and their fabulous subject: the outrageousness of our inflated self-perceptions. His variations on Cervantes (always complete with their own Sancho Panzas) are a tonic to our fantasy-obsessed popular cinema, which keeps bombarding us with the message, better suited for children, that we can do anything. We can’t, of course, so I scratch my head at those who accuse Anderson of lacking humanity: he, more than any director, forces humanity upon us, reminding us, usually comedically, that we’re not the superheroes or celebrities that we’ve made ourselves out to be. The Phoenician Scheme winds down in a restaurant backroom, a single lightbulb above, a deck of cards on the table, smoke in the air, egos finally dissolved… Wes Anderson, robotic? Watch the movie again.
–Jim Andersen