Swiss Army Man – movie review

This gonzo buddy black comedy marks the feature film debut for music video directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively known as DANIELS) … and it is seriously weird stuff that gets weirder the longer it goes. Put simply, Swiss Army Man is the theatre of the absurd, going from the emotional to the whimsical and, dare I say it, occasionally the profound, and back again.

Hank (Paul Dano), a man lacking in confidence, is stranded on a deserted island, having given up all hope of ever making it home again. He is quite literally ready to top himself via a hangman’s noose when he spots a “corpse” washed up on the beach. That pale-faced cadaver is Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) and suddenly the stiff is letting out ginormous amounts of wind. With little if any signs of life, save for farting and becoming a human water fountain, Hank takes it upon himself to assume that Manny may well be his personal savior. Some half an hour into the film, Manny speaks for the first time. He is like a child who knows not what this world is about and before you know it Hank is informing him about masturbation and girls and “hard-ons”.

Through it all, Hank carries a rigid Manny on his back as he tries to find a way off the island. Hank creates things – other people, a bus, a window, play things – out of sticks and garbage. On his mobile phone, which is very low on charge and which, naturally, doesn’t have any network signal, is the home screen photo of an attractive woman he met on a bus. Manny falls for her immediately. It turns out she is a lady who rides on the bus with Hank frequently, but Hank can’t bring himself to talk to her. Hank and Manny – this pair of decided oddballs – become fast friends.

Swiss Army Man is surreal filmmaking that explores vulnerability and connection. For instance, one of the movie’s most indelible images is Hank riding a flatulent Manny at pace over the ocean like a jet ski, not once but twice. It was, in fact, that vision that propelled the two mates who met in an animation class they took in college to go on to write and direct their first feature. Incidentally, they didn’t like each other at first because Scheinert was vocal and opinionated and Kwan was introverted and guarded, but over a couple of semesters they came to respect each other’s differing approaches to creating. Imagination knows no boundaries and this picture won the directing prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Swiss Army Man goes from somewhat intriguing to off the planet nutty. The more obtuse it got the less I liked it. Mind you I admired the imagination, the ideas … but, at times, I felt the narrative got away from the filmmakers. What I am saying is that creativity for creativity’s sake is not enough when it comes to engaging most audiences for the entire duration of a feature film, art house or otherwise.

The manic nature of the acting by Dano, in particular, seemed to suit his sensibilities as an actor and as a result he made the role his own. Radcliffe, too, threw himself into the challenge of playing almost a wooden marionette, much like Pinocchio, who “grew up” being educated by Geppetto. In his case the instruction comes from Dano’s character.

An unusual bromance, Swiss Army Man is, indeed, one for selective tastes who can embrace the weird and the phantasmagorical. Rated M, it scores a 6 to 6½ out of 10.

Director: DANIELS (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano
Release Date: 14 July 2016
Rating: M – Crude humour, sexual references and coarse language

Alex First