Swiss Army Man (2016)

It's been a pretty disappointing summer; there has really been no Mad Max: Fury Road or Inside Out to stand above the endless deluge of sequels and reboots that is Hollywood's stock-in-trade these days. Afraid to take a risk, studios try and feed us the same crap over and over again, and if box office receipts are any indication (currently $1 billion less than last summer), the general public is a little fatigued.

And while Swiss Army Man doesn't exactly live up to last summer's best, it certainly does something else; it's bold, exciting, interesting, and worth thinking about, if ultimately what it has to offer up isn't particularly deep.

Opening on a desolate island, a man named Hank (Paul Dano) is attempting to hang himself, until he sees a flatulent corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) washed up on the shore. Harnessing the power of his farts to propel him through the water, Hank uses the corpse as a jet ski to get him to the mainland. He drags the corpse along on his journey to civilization, and soon the corpse begins to talk.

Named Manny, the corpse possesses a childlike outlook on the world; reanimated, he has forgotten his current life and so questions everything Hank tells him, wondering why humans are isolated and lonely, and more importantly, why we are uncomfortable farting in front of each other.

These aren't exactly hard hitting questions; any freshman philosophy major has surely pondered questions far beyond these. But the way the movie presents these queries is unique enough that you forgive it for not diving a little bit deeper. Manny's wonderment and Hank's explanations lead to some truly beautiful passages in the film, and Hank recreates society out of garbage strewn through the woods they traverse.

The film is written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who collectively call themselves Daniels, best known as music video directors (their most well-known probably being the outrageous, shocking Turn Down For What video, in which people's body parts lose control to the beat of DJ Snake's rhythm). As visual artists, they are ones to be reckoned with, as the truly best parts of the film are those that come closest to being a music video. Accompanying a score by Andy Hull and Robert McDowell (both from the band Manchester Orchestra), there are some sequences here that people will refer back to as I guarantee this movie will attain a sort of cult status in the years to come. The production design by David Duarte is also spectacular, creating a tactile, alternate world out of the trash in the woods.

But, unfortunately, the movie can't sustain itself and falls apart in the end. Without giving too much away, the movie goes to a bold place that unfortunately doesn't work, and leaves you with a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. What had been, up until that point, a morbid but surprisingly touching meditation on life devolves into a stalker creep show. I give the movie props for trying, but it also tries to take the easy way out with it's final images, and the clash doesn't work.

Overall, though, the movie billed as the farting-corpse film surprisingly works very well. Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe are both stellar in the film, Radcliffe especially as the corpse. They achieve a touching relationship, and bizarre as that sounds that a man and a corpse bond, it's a least something refreshing that's worth talking about.