The American director's film “The Phoenician Plan” turned out to be a failure.
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At the large Regal theater near Richmond, Virginia, there were fewer than ten people in attendance for the premiere of Wes Anderson's new film, The Phoenician Plan.
I showed up 15 minutes late, hoping to skip the endless parade of trailers before the main film, but I still got to see a few previews. “The director of Fargo” narrates the animated text before the trailer for Honey Don’t!, a “lesbian B-movie” written and directed by Ethan Coen without Joel’s involvement. The preview is exactly what you’d expect from a Coen film — a genre-bending, iconic combination of noir, Western, and cynical comedy. While that may be interesting to Coen fans, the trailer feels simple, predictable, and formulaic, which serves as a telling warning of what to expect when you watch Anderson’s latest tonight.
Anderson’s work holds a special place in my heart. As a young, intrepid film student, it was his work, more than the films of Truffaut or Tarkovsky, that inspired in me a deep desire to pursue film studies. The unique humor of his early films Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, coupled with the visual aesthetic and sound design of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, brought Anderson to the forefront of American cinema. Among the many “wonders,” Anderson and his studio Indian Paintbrush stood out, creating meta-fantasies that were truly worth the price of admission.
While I often felt Anderson was straying from his path, I still enjoyed his mid-career work. The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel all have a beating heart, full of bittersweet and tender moments that overwhelm the sheer eccentricity of Anderson’s fantasy world.
But it was towards the end of Anderson’s career that the American auteur finally lost that audience. The French Messenger was a derivative, lifeless mess. Flat, empty and self-indulgent. A film for Godard fans to introspect about, so it goes. His next film, Asteroid City, was, I think, no better. Horribly incoherent in its plot and sporting a pastel palette so overdone it threatened to damage the viewer’s retinas, I left the cinema wondering whether I would pay more to see another of Anderson’s strange diary entries on surrealism.
And here I am on Thursday. The premiere. Your humble correspondent and nine other cinephiles eager to re-enter Anderson’s wacky, farcical world. But from the start, I noticed problems. The film follows Zsa Zsa Korda, played by Benicio Del Toro, a ruthless, wealthy industrialist who tries to make deals with a network of eccentric financiers to finance his mining operations. Meanwhile, Korda is being hunted by a group of nameless assassins who try and fail again to kill the unkillable man.
Along for the ride is Korda's estranged daughter Liesl, a questioning nun who seeks a rambling, emotionless reconciliation with her stoic father. It's the biggest role of 24-year-old Mia Threpleton's career, and she fits right in as another
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
