Susan Granger’s review of “Swiss Army Man” (A24)
As bizarrely provocative as “The Lobster,” yet not as engrossing, this twisted tale involves a shipwreck survivor, Hank (Paul Dano), stranded on a deserted beach.
After giving up all hope of rescue, at the moment when Hank tries to hang himself, he spies a corpse washing up on the sand. It’s Manny (Daniel Radcliffe), who soon becomes the castaway’s confidante/best friend.
While Manny’s flatulence initially annoys Hank, he soon finds it useful – mounting Manny’s back, allowing his expelled gas to propel them across the waves like a motorboat. That leads to other experiments in which Manny’s inert body proves a useful tool to ignite fires, chop wood, fish, and hunt wild game, as Hank struggles to survive.
In Hank’s delirious imagination, Manny not talks with him but guides him in an extended exploration of masturbation and other existentialist possibilities of life as they’re trekking through the woods.
Music video co-writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively calling themselves Daniels, create a darkly humorous, surreal concept that’s wildly imaginative until it becomes gratingly irritating and contrived.
According to notes, it all began as a weird joke that was developed at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting and Directing Labs, drawing on ideas generated in their 2011 short films “Dogboarding,” “Puppets,” “My Best Friend’s Sweating” and amplified in “Pockets” (2012).
When Paul Dano (“Love & Mercy”) and Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter”) agreed to play the leads, the amiable collaboration grew to include cinematographer Larkin Seipe as they filmed on Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, and in the redwood forests outside Eureka, California.
As the uniquely stylized ‘bromance’ blossomed, an underwater kiss seemed inevitable.
FYI: Daniel Radcliffe only used a stunt double for the scene in which Manny is attacked by a vicious raccoon.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Swiss Army Man” is a strange, fart-filled 4, an absurdist fantasy.
