"Swiss Army Man "by Dan Kwang and Daniel Shaintner is the best romantic film for the 2016 year, in the way that"Sausage Party"proved to be the best political satire. Wonderful and absurd, the movie will laugh at you with the first fart and will make you cry with the last one. Tragicomedy begins with Hank (Paul Daino), who tries to hang himself while staying on something that looks like an uninhabited island. While humming the last tune of his favorite song, the guy sees a corpse lying on the shore (Daniel Radcliffe). Gas-induced convulsions convince him that the dead body is alive. Hank rides his way to the horizon, pumping the gasses like a water scooter.
Both find themselves on a vast beach surrounded by rocks and tall trees. Hank moves the corpse on his back (and in the meantime pushes a cork stopper in his ass) and they both enter the unknown forest, which will become their home in the coming weeks. It turns out that the corpse can talk, his name is Manny and he has many questions about life, love and everything else. They have a strange friendship, and Hank faces his biggest fear - to talk to the girl of his life. How do you ever talk about such a movie? I wanted the review to be just a description of the first ten minutes that are a perfect short film and contain more surprises and excitement than half of the corporate output that came out this summer, but it seems inevitable to get away with the issue that may be maturing in your heads, "What the hell is this?" As I wrote in the first paragraph - it's a romantic film. You can look like a romantic film between two boys. One of them is alive, the other (at least temporarily) is dead. "Swiss Army Man" is as much a film about friendship as about reconciliation, the challenges of growing up and the painful clash with reality. A Don Quixote story about another mad dreamer, driven out of society, and found salvation in his delusions. But how beautiful and intimate are these delusions. Who has the right to reach them?
The level of detail in the production is amazing. When the two boys are in their improvised shelter, dozens of inventions, symbolic marks, and references to popculture can be found. There is also a girl in the film, Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winchester), who appears in Hank's memories and visions. She is the girl on the bus, which he never talks about. What is love, what is sexual attraction and why is it so difficult to explain these concepts to a corpse? The heart of the film is somewhere between the two love stories - the one between the two boys and the unrelated between Hank and Sara. I accidentally came across a curious article where, through illustrations, attention is drawn to something quite obvious, yet easy to omit - the homosexual subtext. From the phallic symbols, through the asses, and the moral lesson that Hank learns, we can beat the film as an allegory for a young boy who reconciles with his body. Phrases like Manny's: "Oh God I'm disgusting. My body is disgusting "are quite eloquent about the direction. But there is no need to have just one explanation. The film is multi-layered and open to interpretation so you can create your own personal story or connect it with something of your personal life. Paul Daino and Daniel Radcliffe - fantastic. Daino alternately exchanges different states - despair, excitement, panic, hysteria, even dressing and playing a girl in a perfectly glamorous and romantic-seductive way. Radcliffe is flawless as a corpse. When he must be dead (using an easy, but spectacular trick like a lazy eye), former Harry Potter looks cold and insensitive, but when the emotions begin to rush into his body, Radcliffe is unique.
"Swiss Army Man" is a heartbreaking debut for writers and directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Shaintner who quickly kill the sentimental without slipping into the trap of the cynical. The film is shocking for some, but definitions such as "shuffle" and "elementary" do not even hit what the creators have set out. A simple allegory for the reconciliation of two incompatibilities and the cliché line.