wes's first letter to the phoenicians (13:11)
the real meaning behind the phoenician scheme that nobody is talking about // PLEDGE DRIVE WEEK at *life is disappointing*
My goal with this newsletter is to write about new films as they reach general release and to feature seasonally appropriate commentary on other cinematic events and interests. This week we’ve got Wes Anderson’s latest project The Phoenician Scheme, plus an exciting PSA about finances and self-promotion. This newsletter comes out every Wednesday, which despite my best intent still means Friday.
Some housekeeping before I get into the new Wes Anderson movie: it’s pledge drive week at *life is disappointing*! Two things:
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We’re 28 years into our relationship with Wes Anderson, and I think it's time to ask what we're doing and why. Either this relationship hinges on repetition and will continue as is until death do us part, or we're both growing in our own unique ways and need to make a decision about what comes next.
A few years ago I was convinced we were in the former situation, which for me is grounds for a break up. Every relationship has its exhaustion points, and Anderson and mine maxed out about two-thirds into Moonrise Kingdom. Critical consensus seems to agree I was pulling back just as Anderson was hitting his peak, but it’s hard to argue that he wasn’t hiding behind expanded intricacy and enhanced tweeness to cover for a lack of fresh ideas.
Wes must have gotten the memo, though, because he’s been expanding his narrative boundaries ever since. From Grand Budapest Hotel through Isle of Dogs and French Dispatch, Anderson has demonstrated an increasing interest in formal experiments that push the boundaries of narrative and explore the relationship between art, artist, and emotion. The capstone is 2023’s Asteroid City, which starts like self-parody but ends closer to Godard, a play-within-a-play about grief and creativity with more going on than a person can access in one watch. It might be less charming than his early works, but Anderson has devoted the second half of his career to exploring meta-narratives that interrogate, but don’t undercut, the mix of precious artifice and wry sentimentality that made us fall in love in the first place.
The Phoenician Scheme is a more conventional film than Asteroid City, and at first glance a shallower one. Anderson unleashes a rush of content that intentionally overwhelms the audience, pummeling us with information delivered at a rapid-fire staccato that offers hardly any room to breathe. It's the story of Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), a ruthless arms dealer who has accumulated a John Wick-esque whirlwind of enemies bent on assassinating him before he closes the deal on an enormous infrastructure project in a mythical version of 1950s Lebanon. The only thing separating Zsa-Zsa from destiny is "The Gap," an indefinite SNAFU that he describes as "the missing slice of a pie that was baked too big for the pan."
This sounds like a metaphor, and you can bet Wes Anderson will use it to explore family dynamics. After a near-death experience, Zsa-Zsa appoints his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as his heir.1 Unfortunately, Liesl is a devout Catholic with a vocation to become a nun. Zsa-Zsa writes her into his estate all the same, and soon she’s globetrotting alongside him through assassination attempts, real estate deals, and plane crashes, accompanied by a gem-encrusted rosary and an entomologist named Bjørn (Michael Cera). As you could probably expect, father and daughter grow increasingly close over the course of the film, exchanging lots of stilted dialogue conveyed through jumpy shot/reverse shots while Michael Cera lingers awkwardly in the background.
If you want to treat this as an “OK, we get it” kind of movie, then that's what we've got: business tycoon blusters through a series of comic misadventures as he gradually discovers that the missing piece of the pie is family. This, along with visual control and sardonic humor, is where Anderson feels most comfortable, and if that’s all the thought you want to give to this film then you can take it or leave it.2 I'd like to dig into where Anderson is uncomfortable and see what we can glean from that.
**SPOILERS AHEAD. Nothing too shocking, but you might want to go see the movie first.**
My theory of recent Wes Anderson is that he’s most vulnerable when he’s filming in black-and-white. In Asteroid City, the full-color scenes are framed as a stage play that plays up artifice and hits all the typical beats of an Anderson story. In contrast, the black-and-white scenes frame a more grounded exploration of artistic motivation behind and beyond the set. This is a new side of Wes Anderson, hinted at in previous films but never fully indulged, and it lets us into an emotional messiness that hasn’t been present since his earliest work. I don't want to diagnose, but it seems that this guy is sort of obsessive about color palettes, so I’d imagine that black-and-white offers him some freedom from his compulsions. Spared from worrying about beige, Anderson can release some control and get honest about what’s bugging him, and at the same time signal to his audience that he’s doing something outside our typical expectations.
There are five black-and-white scenes in The Phoenician Scheme, all of them set in an eschatological zone that Zsa-Zsa visits after traumatic/near-death events. In some ways these scenes are even more diorama-like and stagey than usual (the credits label the heavenly cast as “The Troupe”). But they also provide a space for free-associative play. In our first visit, Zsa-Zsa witnesses the funeral of a child who appears to be his former self. Later, he carries a stag stuck with arrows that bleeds gold coins, dumping it before his three former wives as they look on in judgment. On the third visit he’s on trial, handcuffed to the podium as young Liesl tells the story of the day he sent out her mother. And finally, Zsa-Zsa stands before God, played (of course) by Bill Murray, who tells him that his actions are damnable to Hell before reminding him, with a look that almost resembles pity, of his complicity in the crucifixion.
Each of these scenes chop up the otherwise madcap narrative of Zsa-Zsa’s race to close the Gap. As the viewer struggles to keep pace with what’s going on, the black-and-white interludes seem to further muddle the plot. But a step back reveals their purpose: each encounter with the otherwordly helps Zsa-Zsa make a real-life decision that brings him closer to Liesl. He lets her in as his provisional heir; he opens up to her about her past; he confesses to her his culpability in the death of her mother; and finally, after his encounter with Bill Murray, he makes his wildest move yet and asks permission to be baptized Catholic.
This is the real twist of The Phoenician Scheme: it’s a conversion story. The most famous conversion stories involve blindings and banners and talking crosses, but the best are the mundane ones that result from the circumstances of everyday life. For Zsa-Zsa, joining the Church is a matter of convenience. Ruthless as ever, he states that his intent is one part covering eschatological bases, one part fiduciary, and 75% trust in his daughter. There are no tears or bright lights or miracles. There’s just a question, a nod, and a sacrament.
To Liesl, this is cynical: she insists that Zsa-Zsa’s baptism won’t work without a movement of genuine grace. But Zsa-Zsa has a better understanding of worldly realities: he knows, more often than not, that people convert because of other people. They do it for marriage, they do it for community, they do it because they love their families. Does that make their conversion any less real? Sure, personal belief and fear of God, etc. are important, but a central tenet of sacramental religion will always be that the heart of faith is putting in the work(s)3. Zsa-Zsa proves his faith through meal-time prayers, exorbitant donations, and bringing in the numbers (he sweetens the salvific pot by baptizing all nine of his sons). You can call this empty ritualism, but Catholics, like Marxists, know that we live in a material world where praxis counts a whole lot more than feelings - in fact, for a fallen race where feelings are culpable, that’s sort of the whole point. When Liesl scolds Zsa-Zsa for requesting a baptism without belief, Zsa-Zsa responds, “I’m capable of genuinely believing in the opposite of my personal convictions.” Has anyone better demonstrated their readiness to become Catholic?
You could argue that the conversion narrative in The Phoenician Scheme only serves to support the father-daughter narrative, that the divine intervention has nothing to with God and everything to do with Zsa-Zsa getting in touch with his family feelings. To that, Anderson responds with a final black-and-white sequence, the follow-up to a climactic near-death confrontation that coincides with the final closing of the Gap. An angel (played by Wes Anderson’s daughter - psychoanalyze that) leads the heavenly Troupe to a staircase. The procession move on, but Liesl and Zsa-Zsa ascend to a tabernacle-like vault where they lay to rest the Korda family relics. Liesl turns to Zsa-Zsa like a priest at the consecration. "When I pray to God, I never hear anything back,” she says. “I mostly just do what I think he'd say. Usually it's pretty obvious." Zsa-Zsa responds with a solemn “Amen.”
Call this film shallow, but I'd say this is a pretty extraordinary move: a thesis statement about divine silence at the climax of a film about the manifest results of doing too much. Liesl finally understands her father’s realism, and he in turn finally understands her piety. They’ve reached a mutual understanding that faith isn’t a reliance on signs and wonders but rather the assurance that there’s something to hold onto beyond personal conviction. Anderson gets in on the Catholic game with all the hyper-externalized gold and gemstones that you’d expect him to love, but in the black-and-white afterlife he acknowledges the silent side of Christianity: bread that looks like bread, wine that tastes like wine, rites that reads like legal documents, devotion going in and nothing coming back. Prayer isn’t anything but getting comfortable with your distance from God. Faith isn’t much more than maintaining a pretty firm knowledge of what’s good for you. And love, I guess, is the force that ekes through all of it.
Nothing changes after Zsa-Zsa’s “amen.” The Gap is cleared, the Scheme is complete. Does it do anything? Uncertain. Are Liesl or Zsa-Zsa transformed? Unclear. He’s bankrupt and she’s out of her vocation; all they have left is nine mouths to feed and a family restaurant. And of course, each other. In the film’s epilogue, Anderson relishes in a long, slow shot of father and daughter playing a late-night game of rummy, filmed mostly in silence. They aren’t holy and they aren’t humbled - they’re just together in a messy kitchen at the conclusion of a film that finally seems to be at peace with itself.
Wes Anderson could tell stories about absent fathers and their wanting children for the rest of his life, and he could do it with varying degrees of visual intricacy and comic tweeness. But his understanding of that relationship is deepening, and what’s seeping in is a depiction of love as an unsettling force that busts up even the most careful schemes and color palettes. The adolescent emotions of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums won’t cut it anymore, and what’s felt glib or trite in the films that came after is replaced by ideas that can only be grasped at the boundaries of traditional narrative. The Phoenician Scheme doesn’t seem to be working for many people, but I think what comes across as emptiness stems from the time it spends delving into the gap between the minutely cute and the overtly profound.4 The result is an intricate film that’s baked too big for the pan, it’s heart all concentrated in the missing piece. Which is maybe how it has to be. We might never get the answer, but when we take the time to listen to the silence, the nature of the gap is - well, it’s usually pretty obvious.
Thanks for reading *life is disappointing.* If you found this newsletter slightly less disappointing than the rest of your life, consider liking, commenting, pledging me money (thanks!), or subscribing. Subscribing will get you exactly what you get here but sent to your email inbox. I’ll be back next week with thoughts on Celine Song’s Materialists and Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.
Anderson has always been a daddy-issues guy, but this is the first time he’s honed in on a relationship between father and daughter. This might have something to do with the fact that Anderson has a nine-year-old daughter. It might also have something to do with this movie being sort of about his father-in-law and, presumably, his wife.
For the record, I think it really works - it made me sleepy the first time I saw it, but on second viewing, everything hit. Michael Cera is in full Wally Brando mode, giving the absurdist performance of his career. Anderson is more active with his camera work than he’s ever been before. The sets feature a dozen Baroque and Renaissance masterpieces rented at what I assume was great cost. It’s been nearly three decades now; this guy knows what he’s doing, and he’s good at it.
See James 2:26.
I simply cannot get through this review of a Catholic-ish film that centers on a concept called “The Gap” without noting that theologian Jean-Luc Marion, in his essay “The Present and the Gift” (published in God Without Being, 1991) uses nearly identical language to describe the way the materialism of the Catholic Eucharist differs from the emotionalism of Protestant communion. Is Wes Anderson reading Marion? I am positive that he is not. But if you are and you’re reading this, we should talk.
Note: I've taken to heart the spoilers alert and skipped ahead to comment solely on the appeal. My intention here is to refute the notion that intellectual property is theft, and in doing so to encourage all who read this column to become paid subscribers. I'm making a couple of assumptions here. First, anyone reading this is presumably of an intellectual bent. Otherwise, why the hell would you put up with this drivel? Second, you're not an entirely heartless bastard. So, you can withstand a little more, right? Okay, here goes. The idea that property is theft, while often misattributed to Marx, actually derives from the 19th century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Now right there, that ought to be setting off a klaxon. ‘Cause if there’s one person you don’t want to rely on when it comes to actual real world stuff like money, it’s a French intellectual. Art? Sure. Fashion, you betcha. Food? Naturellement. But, money, nossir.
Even so, Proudhon had a point. Property, in the sense of land, was acquired through conquest. That was inherently unjust. But does this mean that all property is theft? To answer this question, we must turn from the libidinous French to the much more sensible Scots. I give you Adam Smith: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Indeed, human nature dictates that, however much we might wish that all good things would be shared out of benevolence, intellectual property, like bread, must be paid for if its creators are not to starve. If only Van Gogh had received a decent sum for his gorgeous paintings he might have found happiness in life. Instead, lonely and poor, he shot himself at the age of 37. His last words: "The sadness will last forever". Don’t let this happen again. Subscribe.