Swiss Army Man and the Beauty in Unexpected Places
Dan and Daniel’s directorial debut delights and disturbs
Directed by Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan (referred to by many simply as the Daniels), and starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, Swiss Army Man arrived in the world as a veritable Dan convention.
But more than a Dan convention, Swiss Army Man tells the coming-to-life story of a water-logged corpse and his troubled new friend. As the movie begins, Hank, portrayed by Paul Dano, is stranded on a deserted island and is preparing to hang himself. Just then, a stiffened body, Manny, played by Daniel Radcliffe, washes ashore and instills Hank’s life with new meaning.
There’s no denying it’s an eccentric premise. To even call the movie off-beat may be a gross understatement. Its plot is as unmired in precedent as the whimsically hummed melodies checkered throughout every other scene. It’s a triumph of experimental film-making.
Following Radcliffe’s departure from the world of Harry Potter, his cinematic appearances have been bizarre almost across the board. From “Igor” in Victor Frankenstein to a man with bolted guns for hands in Guns Akimbo, it may sound like a reach to call his role in this 2016 film his very strangest. But watching his flatulence-propelled, fire-starting, cannon-ball-shooting cadaver of a character on screen, there’s no denying that the part is at least a contender. Swiss Army Man is a story for the ages. What that story is, though, doesn’t easily lend itself to summary.
Helmed by the award-winning pair of directors that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022 — as well as the delightfully raucous music video for the DJ Snake and Lil Jon song “Turn Down for What” — their 2016 directorial debut parades the same hallmark weirdness on full display within both. But as in the 2022 sci-fi spectacle, their childish antics and immaturity are pointed toward a greater end.
In the multiversal madness of Everything Everywhere All at Once, though, the movie has a way of stretching on for long enough to lose many of the viewers by the time credits roll and that greater end arrives. The circuitous, confounding sci-fi madness conceals some of the movie’s underlying depth. A deeper moral is hidden beneath an Inception-like cloud of confusion. But where their 2022 entry is bloated and ambitious enough to live up to all that the title implies, Swiss Army Man tells a near photo-negative story compared to their later film with this off-kilter tale of introspection and isolation.
Swiss Army Man is an odd and internal odyssey that blurs the line between places and states of mind. We’re led to question Hank’s sanity as the movie goes in increasingly craven directions, and also given a reason to believe that the events of the film are something more than the mere imaginings of a loon.
There’s a breed of story that’s risen to new heights in recent years that seems to treat confusion as the prime objective. In many cases, though, it’s impossible to deny the cinematic prowess that goes into these types of films. But even while there’s no denying the skill and artistry within projects like Saltburn, Poor Things, Beau Is Afraid, and Men, they fall short of transmitting true meaning for large swaths of viewers.
Swiss Army Man appears to fit into this mold neatly. Throughout a lulling first act of the movie, it feels like little more than a well-crafted excuse for grotesqueness.
But where the film ultimately differentiates itself is in the queer beauty that pokes its head through the macabre surface. At face value, it’s hard to imagine that the tale of Hank and his decaying companion would drive home much emotional depth. To even describe it aloud sounds more like a satire pitch than the components of a feature-length film.
And yet, as the two characters talk about the nature of life and society and what it would mean for them to return to it, there’s an unexpected poignancy that their exchanges impart.
It’s often said that if we comb through the history of film, we’ll find the same few stories recycled over and over ad infinitum. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces goes to painstaking lengths to recount the vast plethora of stories that all fit neatly into the same hero archetype. In new stories, genuine originality is uncommon.
It’s rare for movies to feel so utterly novel in what they create as Swiss Army Man. But it’s rarer still for the deviations from formula to feel justified — to rise to something more than strange for the sake of strange.
While the scatological symphony that the directors conduct is undeniably captivating, the most fulfilling aspect of Swiss Army Man is the current of melancholy and loneliness that trickles underneath its maddened, maniacal surface.
As a piece of storytelling, the film can rightly be called insular and a little self-satisfied. And yet, I found myself tickled, perplexed, elated, and oddly moved by the film’s discombobulated cadence and catharsis. There’s a demented sort of allure to the Daniels’ vision. It’s at once deviously warped and soul-stirringly innocent. It’s revolting yet magnetic.
It’s also rare for a movie so latticed with bodily humor and masturbation jokes to muster moments of such biting epiphany and pathos. Swiss Army Man is unwieldy and abrasive, but remains — peculiarly, maybe paradoxically — pure of heart.
In the absence of social interaction, the woods of this mysterious island come to life and imagination colors the characters’ world. The unlikely duo reanimates the great stories of the past in an extemporized community comprised of vines and twigs. They recreate the beauty in mundane events like bus rides.
The simple melodies of the early scenes are replaced by more intricate and inventive ones as Manny naively asks more about the lives and loves awaiting them both back in civilization. The Andy Hull and Robert McDowell score is equal parts intimate, layered, playful, and atmospheric. It’s comical, even hilarious, but still impressively emotive.
There’s a sobriety in their return to society and a sadness that comes across when our fears that Hank was simply insane are confirmed. But there’s a quintessentially head-scratching magic we’re left with as the movie closes and viewers are given a riotous reason to believe after all.
This article was originally published on Medium.
If you enjoyed this article, you can support my work on here for under $2.00 a month. It would make an enormous difference in helping me to bring you the quality writing you deserve during these times when journalism is under attack.
Sounds like this is one to miss.