The Phoenician Scheme 4K 2025 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

1950, somewhere in the Middle East. Extravagant tycoon Ja-Ja Korda survives a series of assassination attempts and embarks on a grand transcontinental project called “The Phoenician Scheme.” In an effort to protect his empire, Corda appoints his daughter Lisl as his sole heir, pulling her out of a convent. They must face numerous enemies, political intrigues, and fight for the future of their family, their business, and all of Phoenicia.

Review 4K Movie

The “Phoenician Scheme” is something between an attempt by parents to understand their children and children to understand their parents, with a hint of the director's family history and a cherry on top in the form of biblical references.

However, let's start at the beginning. Wes Anderson tells us about dysfunctional families in his films, and here we have, once again, an eternally absent father who has no closeness to any of his (numerous) children, is constantly in danger, but always miraculously survives. His daughter wants to devote her life to serving God in the literal sense of the word — she is going to become a nun. It would seem that these two have nothing in common except blood ties. But, incredibly, they turn out to be very important to each other.

In his early works, Anderson always viewed parent-child relationships solely from the child's perspective; his adults were usually infantile and incapable of responsibility. After “The Darjeeling Limited,” his perspective changed somewhat. Perhaps the author was influenced by some internal changes, or perhaps by his own fatherhood. Since then, his exploration of intergenerational relationships has become more profound, and the characters have begun to seek solutions from both sides. And while Steve Zissu did not want to grow up, Benicio Del Toro's character is eager to do so, as if he himself does not understand his true motives. What drives his decision to leave his entire inheritance to his only daughter? Everyone will answer this question in their own way. For some, he will be a man who thought about his soul, for others, a calculating character who tries to predict the future.

And now a little about the echoes of the director's life in this film. As soon as I saw the trailer, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Michael Cera's character and Wes Anderson himself. His slightly shy manner, his jacket, and his endless dedication to his work. In this film, Wes Anderson pays tribute to his father-in-law, Fouad Malouf, who was a Lebanese engineer. Apparently, his father-in-law was so important to the director that this film expresses his respect, admiration, and reverence for his memory. The incredible combination of a real person and a fictional character adds a wide range of colors to Ja Ja Korda, making him the center of the narrative, from which it is impossible, and indeed undesirable, to tear oneself away.

How can we discuss Wes Anderson without mentioning the colors in the film? His previous film, “The Royal Tenenbaums,” was shot in muted but still bright mint and pink tones. Here, we see a combination of green, blue, brown, and, of course, white. White stands out because the main character, a nun (Mia Triplton), is dressed in a snow-white outfit. Later, her attraction to bright objects makes us understand what she was looking for in this lifestyle and what was hidden behind a certain mask. The white and blue patterns on the tiles in one of the opening scenes of the film refer us to the sterile cleanliness of hospitals or the luxury of castles, behind whose doors their inhabitants keep their secrets. The same is conveyed by the overhead shot, which observes people's lives and seems to see everything they want to hide from others.

This new humanistic statement by Wes Anderson is so similar to his other works, but at the same time, it differs from them in its scope. The director delves deeper into conversations about the eternal, through self-acceptance and acceptance of those around him, to more philosophical themes. The more The Pharaoh's Scheme strives to be a parable, but without moralizing. And although much has already been said, it seems to me that this is a transition to the next level of the story. A new stage of therapeutic cinema from an author who always seems to embrace you with his films.