The God of Francis Thompson is a stubborn God. In his seminal poem “The Hound of Heaven,” a soul is on the run from God: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; / I fled Him, down the arches of the years.” The “hound” is persistent, however, and is always pursuing with “unhurrying chase, / And unperturbèd pace, / Deliberate speed, majestic instancy.” Who is this God whose love for us is so passionate and resolute, who will forgive even the gravest of sins and chase us to the ends of the world?
The God of Francis Thompson is the God that operates in Wes Anderson’s latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme. The film follows Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), an industrialist and morally bankrupt magnate in the style of J. Paul Getty or Aristotle Onassis who, after surviving yet another mysterious assassination attempt, decides to call upon his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novice “sister of the cloth.” He intends not only to bequeath his vast fortune to her, but also to enlist her in completing the “most important project of [his] lifetime,” the “Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme.”
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