Swiss Army Man (2016, Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) Movie

RELEASE DATE: June 17
CAST: Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead

 

All of the headlines I've seen for this have been hilarious.

 

It looks really fun.

 

This looks great

 

I'm curious to watch it, but am more excited about the soundtrack since Andy Hull and Robert McDowell of Manchester Orchestra are behind it.

 

Ah yes, the Daniel Radcliffe farting boner corpse movie. I'm really curious to check this out.

 

Just got the OST and love it so much! Can't wait for this to come out next week and check it out!

 

this looks genuinely, completely un-ironically amazing

 

Can stream it here. Cave Ballad is so beautifully done.

Listen to Manchester Orchestra’s Full Score For ‘Swiss Army Man’

 

I did not like this

 

Trailer looked interesting, but nothing I'd want to sit through an entire feature length movie for. Curious to hear the soundtrack though.

 

Everything about this movie sounds great. The OST is incredibly well done.

SWISS ARMY MAN Review: The Best Movie Of The Year So Far

^ My tastes very often align with Devin's. If that's any indicator, this will be my movie of the year.

 

this movie was a toot. i mean a hoot.

 

I had so many thoughts about this movie (and still do). I kind of said everything I want to say for now in my letterboxd review but I don't want to be a tool who posts a links to his letterboxd reviews so instead I'll be a tool who copies and pastes his letterboxd review here. I'm sorry.

Let's get this straight from the get-go: I'm enamored with this film. It was exhilarating, hilarious, beautiful, introspective, brilliant, dumb, absurd, creepy, sad, and weird as fucking hell. There is far more to talk about and think about than I will ever put down here in this space...

I feel like it's a cop out sometimes to say that a piece of art is great because it encapsulates the idea of life or humanity. Those concepts are so vastly broad and vague, any piece can say anything similarly broad or vague and technically do the same thing. But Swiss Army Man is uniquely fascinating. It really is about life, about socialized life. Paul Dano plays Hank, a young man who's been stranded on an island for quite awhile. The film opens with him ready to hang himself. One of the more brilliant, smaller moments is when he slips while standing on the crate, noose around his neck, and he catches himself. Even when we're to the point of wanting to end it all, we still want to do it on our terms. Hank meets a corpse that floats ashore, portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe and named Manny. The film is so absurd that there's no point in trying to nail down whether Manny is a hallucination or how much of what he and Hank do is real or what, pursuing that is just not the point of the film. Suffice it to say that Manny develops the ability to speak, listen, and think. He and Hank begin a friendship. Where the idea of socialization comes in to play is that Manny remembers nothing of his life before he died. He doesn't even know what life is. So Hank has to teach him. In the woods, alone, with just trash and nature around them, Hank guides Manny through the concepts of eating, singing, sexuality, shame, loss, death, fear, survival, social norms, and so much more. It's a really incredible thing that this process leads to farting being a metaphor for life. Manny's farts have the superhuman ability to propel him through the water like a jet ski, to launch grappling hooks into the sky, to start fires. Meanwhile, Hank hides his own farts. When Manny asks why, Hank isn't really able to answer, just that people don't like farts, so he waits or holds them in. "That's so sad", says Manny. And it really is. Not literally holding in farts, but how much of ourselves we hold in. How socialization breeds us to be insecure, depressed, ashamed, embarrassed, about things that are natural and normal and human.

It might sound dubious that farting can be contextualized as such a potent metaphor for humanity. There will be some who just cannot take the film's premise, and that's fine. But for those willing to engage, it is hard to fathom that they won't get something valuable or thought provoking out of the film. Writer/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinart have crafted something profound and engaging and incredible. There are moments of goosebumps inducing anticipation of emotional release, and real, true investment in the relationship between the complex, repressed, and lonely Hank and his best friend, Manny. The filmmaking here is truly exquisite, combined with a truly lush and gorgeous score that I can picture myself listening to for a long time (an evoking of the Jurassic Park theme song becomes achingly touching). Paul Dano gives the performance of a lifetime, and Daniel Radcliffe brings Manny to life (groan) in a remarkable way. The film is so fucking ambitious and absurd and crazy that the ending does sort of feel a little off the rails, like the film would never be able to keep a lid on itself. But then again, isn't that what it's been saying all along? Why hold it in? That'd be so sad.

 

I loved this movie. So many beautiful moments. Easily my favorite of the year. Been thinking about it non stop since watching it yesterday. Watch interviews with cast and crew for like 2hours last night.

 

Saw this yesterday and I would say for about the first 3/4 of the movie, I had a pretty big grin on my face. The last quarter just trying to figure how it was going to wrap up. Very satisfied even if I didn't understand 100% of it.

 

Planning on seeing this some time this week.

 

The film becomes laughably moralistic at the end, something that sounds fine coming from a character who has a childlike understanding of the world, but the film co-opts the message. It is surprisingly funny despite the risk of the conceit getting old quickly. There are some really great gags; the raccoon's head getting blown clean off, the reactions of the people who encounter the main characters at the end, Hank in drag. However, there is a truly brilliant moment near the end, when Hank's father nods approvingly for Hank to run to his corpse friend after it starts to re-animate. It is so sincere, seeming to come straight from an Eighties film, and for a second you can be lost at how bizarre the whole thing is.

Some of the cheesiness can be eye-rolling, but overall it takes the one-sentence joke and makes a surprisingly good film.

 

i wish i could remember everything the directors said about the film at the Q&A i went to when this was playing at Sundance...

 

I liked the little Manchester Orchestra easter eggs in it.

 

What else besides the Andy cameo

 

Mary Elizabeth Winstead was listening to "Every Stone" for a second

and I swear that they quoted one of Manchester Orchestra's lyrics at one point but I'm not sure which it was???

 

Oh shit I just missed that. Pretty cool, gotta watch it again

 

this movie was very strange, it was pretty beautiful though. Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano both really killed it in this, you could tell they were 100% committed the whole time.

 

Paul Dano is great