This Wes Anderson film is more angry than usual: NPR

It has become usual to describe a new Wes Anderson film as “more to the same thing”, but that said something about the richness of his visual imagination that he can make two films in almost the same era that feels nothing.

Anderson’s previous film, Asteroid citywas a magnificent ode warmly nostalgic to the American southwest of the 1950s. His new film, The Phoenician Programtakes place in the same decade, but it is a colder and more timed affair. He follows an obscene businessman named Anatole “ZSA-ZSA” Korda, played by an excellent Benicio Del Toro.

Korda is the last of Anderson’s fringent scoundrels: the Titan of industry as an international mystery man. He travels the world in private jets, earning money, offers and enemies in each turn, and destabilizing governments and operating local workers along the way.

Now Korda wants to establish a lasting inheritance. He plans to develop a massive infrastructure project in a place called Modern Greater Independent Phenicia. To succeed, Korda decides to reconcile with her distant daughter, Liesl – she is the eldest of her ten children – and to make her her heir and her partner.

Liesl, played by a formidable Mia Threrapleton, is not sure that she wants a game. Throwing in a convent at the age of 5, she is now Novicite, and she deserves her father’s dishonest commercial practices. In addition, there is a rumor that is years ago, Korda killed Liesl’s mother.

Murder or not, Korda integrates perfectly into the constantly expanding gallery of Anderson of bad dad, from Royal Tenenbaum to Steve Zissou. The Phoenician Program is a story of reconciliation, and therefore Leesl goes out of course with the Korda hare plan, hoping that it can do good along the way. But it will not be easy.

A large part of the occupied and absurd plot follows Korda while he tries to obtain various partners and family members to help finance his program. Anderson, who wrote the script with Roman Coppola, continues to update us on the amount of each character: sometimes, The Phoenician Program Feels dangerously close to the homework of mathematics.

It is not Also Difficult to follow, especially in relation to the most densely in layers Asteroid city. The infrastructure agreement is essentially an excuse for the director to make as many of his favorite actors as possible. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston play a pair of businessmen who love basketball. Mathieu Amalric presents himself as the owner of the nightclub, Jeffrey Wright as sea captain. And there are also other former Anderson in the mixture, like Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade and Hope Davis.

The first times, however, make the strongest impressions. Rice Ahmed plays an endearing Phoenician prince, and Michael Cera is delicious as a Ringard Norwegian Entomologist named Bjorn. The most moving performances come from Threrapleton. His Liesl has the radiant self -possession of the French icon Anna Karina, who gave one of the great performances of all time to the classic of Jacques Rivette in 1966, The nun.

Although Anderson’s films are often imbued with themes of spirituality, morality and grace, he rarely engages the subject of religion as directly as here. In a way, the father-daughter relationship is a metaphor of God and money, in which Korda’s without end of Korda continues to come up against the strong sense of faith and the social justice of Liesl.

The Phoenician Program Can present itself as a fabulous piece of stylized escape, but it is difficult to look at it and not think of today’s oligarchs. Anderson’s style is often described as whimsical, but here, he made a film on the literal whims of the magnates. The film has its signature visual touches, full of symmetrical compositions and exquisite textures and details, but there is a little inviting coldness in the decorations themselves: the fortress of a rich man, a half-built rail tunnel, a sophisticated but dark nightclub. It is as if we see the truck of extreme wealth.

In some ways, it is one of the darker, darker and more violent films of Anderson. One of the first things we see is a man blown in two by a bomb intended for Korda, who is the target of multiple assassination attempts. Whenever he is in danger, Korda says: “myself, I feel very safe”, which is barely reassuring for those around him.

The Phoenician Program It is well aware that men like Korda aggravate the life of all the others, that is why I always disturb myself by the happy end of the film, which, at the last minute, engine a change of heart. The conclusion which Anderson leaves us could be read, hopefully, that is cynically: for the Kordas “ZSA-Zsa” of the world, to do the right thing, may well require an act of God.