Every Frame Is a Masterpiece
Wes Anderson’s films are like paintings you step inside.
I don’t watch Wes Anderson films like regular movies. I experience them the way I’d walk through an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art…slowly, with more curiosity than comprehension. The Phoenician Scheme was no different. Half the time, I had no idea what was going on. But I wasn’t bored. The costumes alone could’ve carried the film. The sets were so precisely composed they felt like miniatures. And the dialogue? Strange, deadpan, and often hilarious. I didn’t need to follow it. I just needed to watch.
I saw it at the Clairidge in Montclair—not a velvet-curtain single-screen relic, but not a soulless AMC either. It’s the kind of place where Wes Anderson feels at home. His films aren’t built for mass consumption. They’re too particular. Too carefully arranged. They belong somewhere curated, where the popcorn isn’t served in buckets the size of car tires.
The film opens the old-school way with actors’ names and roles right there at the start, like a playbill. And it ends with paintings. Actual classic paintings like Renoir selected to represent the fictional collection of Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the film’s extravagantly dressed main characters. It’s a detail that blurs the line between cinema and art gallery exhibition.
No modern day writer/director could pull this off. Anderson’s obsession with symmetry is, of course, legendary. His shots are precisely framed, like every room was measured with a ruler and dipped in pastels. When things get too still, he throws in a whip pan or a snap zoom, just to jolt you or keep you amused.
Once upon a time, another quirky director with the same initials (W.A. oddly enough) had this kind of gravitational pull…Woody Allen. He could summon an ensemble of A-listers to deliver dry, neurotic monologues about life and death with the snap of his fingers. Now it’s Wes Anderson, drawing that same talent pool into beautifully bizarre little worlds, where emotions are tightly controlled and everything is color-coded.
People say Wes Andersen films are hard to follow. But that’s not really why you go. It’s not about plot twists or traditional storytelling. It’s cinema as a visual and emotional experience, not a narrative one.
If you’ve never seen an Anderson flick, The Phoenician Scheme might not be the best place to start. If you want a gentler entry point, here are a few worth checking out:
The Royal Tenenbaums
Moonrise Kingdom
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Isle of Dogs
Remember, though. Watch them like you’re walking through an art gallery in SoHo. Don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself to “get it.” They’re deliberately weird. Just soak in the colors, the costumes, and the deadpan dialogue.