Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #253 Swiss Army Man (2016)
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I’m not sure that I have ever seen a motion picture deal with explosive flatulence with the poetry and sensitivity of the 2016 cult comedy Swiss Army Man.
Flatulence is central to the film’s aesthetic. Writer-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, reclaim the noble fart joke from the scatological realm of raunchy teen sex comedies and elevate it to the level of art.
The filmmakers don’t see any reason a movie that cannot be at once a celebration of farting and life. In Swiss Army Man posthumous flatulent serves as a ribald rebuke to the solemnity and sadness of life and the grim inevitability of the grave.
Swiss Army Man opens with shaggy, bearded survivor Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) on the brink of self-annihilation. He can no longer bear the loneliness endemic in being the only inhabitant of a deserted island so he decided to kill himself via hanging.
Before he can go through with his plan he notices an unlikely visitor to the island in the form of Manny (Daniel Radcliffe), a corpse who has not let death keep him from unleashing exceedingly loud, intense farts.
The company of a dead man is better than no company at all but our lonely and suicidal hero discovers that Manny has other qualities as well. He’s like a corpse version of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree in that whenever Hank needs something he’s right there to provide it, whether in the form of drinking water or unlikely transportation.
Not long after encountering Manny for the first time, for example, Hank uses him as a deceased human jet ski. This is one of many places where the film deviates from reality and soars into a loopy realm of pure, dreamy fantasy.
It would be easy to read Swiss Army Man as an “Incident at Owl’s Creek”-like narrative about a man who is committing suicide and experiences a bizarre, impossible fantasy in the final moments before dying.
People, after all, cannot be used as waterskis, even if they’re dead. Corpses similarly cannot talk but it isn’t long until Hank’s deceased associate begins gabbing.
Talk does not come easily to Manny, being a corpse and all, and he is stricken by amnesia concerning both the details of his own life and the world at large.
The two men develop a curious bond. Hank acts as a cross between a father figure, older brother and mentor in the ways of the world while the unusually chatty dead body is a little brother figure, naive and inexperienced and eager to learn.
Swiss Army Man is not just about explosive flatulence among the no longer living. It is just as concerned, to the point of obsession, with the equally lowbrow prospect of dead men getting monster boners.
Manny, you see, is not just a Talking Corpse?!? He’s also shockingly horny for a dead guy. The rest of his body may no longer function but he has the excitable penis of a teenage boy who has just discovered masturbation.
Being both child-like a dead guy, Manny does not understand the complexities of romance and sex, but he feels primal urges all the same. Despite being both alive and an ostensible adult, Hank doesn’t understand women, or love, or life, much better than his unusual protege but that does not keep him from trying to teach his new sidekick everything he knows.
Hank has gone quite mad from isolation and loneliness but he sees in his farting new corpse friend an opportunity for redemption, for salvation, for companionship and human connection.
Swiss Army Man is intriguingly unconcerned with its character’s backstories and future. It's a gorgeously realized, one of a kind motion picture experience that lives forever in the sacred, mercurial present tense.
You might imagine that a movie about a suicidal man leading a miserable existence on a deserted island and his dead friend would be morose or depressing. You would be wrong!
In no small part due to the shockingly central role flatulence and boners play in the proceedings, Swiss Army Man is surprisingly light on its feet and effervescent. It may explore the intersection of life and death and feature two very lonely, sad man, one of whom is dead, but it is the farthest thing from a bummer.
You might also think that a comedy about a talking dead dude who is a veritable farting machine and also is constantly getting stiffies would be campy and outrageous, a lowbrow romp chockablock with scatological nastiness. You would be wrong as well!
The Daniels instead go for a tricky, fragile tone that eschews ribald kitsch as well as dreary melodrama. Swiss Army Man is beautiful as well as unexpectedly poignant, a true sleeper.
Radcliffe here achieves the miraculous feat of creating a nuanced, multi-dimensional character who also happens to be a flatulence corpse. The role doesn’t really allow Radcliffe to emote, at all, because he’s a dead dude yet he manages to reach us all the same.
Dano is equally good. He’s ethereal and otherworldly in his own right, a man who wants more than anything to exist in the world he once knew, because it is a goddamn paradise compared to his current circumstances.
Swiss Army Man’s premise seems like it would be impossible to pull off as anything more than an audacious short film. Yet the filmmakers manage to make us care about these people and their spiritual struggles all the same, resulting in a movie about a dead guy and his very sad friend that positively roars with life.
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