The Phoenician Scheme Explained with Wes Anderson & Benicio del Toro (EXCLUSIVE)
Director Wes Anderson and actors Benicio del Toro and Michael Cera deconstruct Kordo’s journey of self-discovery.
**SPOILER WARNING!! Spoilers below for The Phoenician Scheme!**
Director Wes Anderson loves to mine the inner lives of his eclectic characters, which he does again through the lens of a very odd father/daughter tale in his latest Focus Features film, The Phoenician Scheme (click here for tickets).
Set in 1950, the film lays out the unorthodox life of ruthless businessman Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro). A man with nine lives, he’s cheated death far too often. He realizes that before it finally sticks for good, he wants to appoint a successor, his only daughter Liesel (Mia Threapleton), and secure the financial means to close one last career-defining project: the Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme.
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Estranged from said daughter, who is on the cusp of taking her vows to become a Catholic nun, Korda promises to get to the bottom of her mother’s mysterious murder in order to coax her away from her modest life at the convent. Together, they travel Phoenicia to meet with a string of eccentric investors — played by Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson and Benedict Cumberbatch — to try to secure their family’s legacy.
What happens at the end of The Phoenician Scheme?
After surviving airplane calamities, assassination attempts, rejection from their financial partners and great betrayal, the journey to complete Korda’s very specific plan ends up bonding the father and daughter. While both eccentrics, they possess wildly different moral compasses, yet the two come to see where they are alike and where they can bend towards one another.
In the epilogue, the Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme doesn’t secure investment from his list of robber barron co-horts. After Korda manages to survive one more assassination attempt at the hands of his half-brother Nublar (Benedict Cumberbatch), he decides to fund the scheme himself. It bankrupts him but it ensures that the work will be completed with paid wages to the workers as his daughter demands.
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Korda and Liesel return to his mansion which they are forced to sell to cover the scheme costs. They invest in a much smaller and more meager home that serves as the primary residence for Korda, Liesel (now fully committed to a secular life), and Korda’s gaggle of young sons. Liesel is a loving older sister to the boys while they are tutored by Carlson (Michael Cera). Korda leans on his cooking skills to run a modest bistro where Liesel is a waitress. During one of her breaks, Carlson presents her with an engagement ring that was returned to Korda by Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson). Liesel agrees to marry him.
At the end of the business day, Korda and Liesel close up their bistro and retire to their ramshackle back room to play cards and share the day’s happenings with one another in quiet contentment. They may be poor but they have found the richness of their restored relationship and a life where happiness is all about the small things.
What was Korda’s journey all about?
NBC Insider was included in a recent press conference featuring Wes Anderson and his cast where they discussed the major themes in the film, such as redemption, the restoration of broken relationships and how Liesel’s slow thaw towards Korda opens his heart to a new way of life.
"I think that there is an element of my character wanting a second chance at mending a broken relationship,” del Toro said of Korda’s adjusted goals in the film. "I think that in the process, in order to achieve that, he has to change, and he does change. I like to think that people can change. Not everyone changes, but I think some people can and for the better. I think that there is an element to that and thanks to the relationship with his daughter, that's something that the movie has. It moves me when I see it."
Michael Cera says the redemption theme comes through so beautifully in the scene where father and daughter play cards together. "That last shot really tells you, not just that they've changed for the better, but that there actually is a way to find his version of what I think is domestic bliss,” he assessed.
Anderson added that it was only in the final editing of The Phoenician Scheme that even his intentions made themselves fully known. "I think the whole story of the movie, this whole mission that he goes on in our movie, he's being confronted with the possibility of his death again and again,” Anderson said of Korda’s sobering confrontations with mortality. "He's dying again and again, in fact. What he thinks he has is a business plan that he wants to make sure goes through. But I think maybe from the beginning, in a way, his whole business plan is really a mechanism for him to get back together with [Liesel]. He's acting like he's making her his successor, and really, it's more about what's going to happen between the two of them right now. The business plan almost becomes like a ritual for him to be reunited with his daughter.
"And in that sense, his plan goes great,” Anderson emphasized. "He does well. Also, it's better for the world if someone like our character, Zsa-zsa Korda, operates on a smaller, more local scale. I think we can say that about a lot of people; some people who do big things, it would be better if they did smaller things. You don't have to do it to all of us. You could just do it to a little group, and sometimes that's good."
Does The Phoenician Scheme have an end-credits scenes?
No, the film does not have a post-credit scene. Anderson’s credits feature works of art that are referenced in the film as part of Kordo’s collection.
How can I watch The Phoenician Scheme?
The Phoenician Scheme is now playing wide in theaters. Click here for tickets!
