All right, hold on to your hats! I zipped off pre noon on a warm summer day to catch this film that I missed at Sundance. It was all the buzz at the festival with many hating it, some loving it and everyone talking about the “farting corpse”!
I was informed by the ticket seller that I would be the sole patron which delighted me. Cecil B. McCabe screening one of his films. The fellow said he had seen it and loved it but it was weird. I told him I liked weird to which he replied, “Did you see ‘The Lobster’?” I indicated that I had and enjoyed it. We had a weird moviegoers’ chuckle and he ended with “Then you will love this”.
When a movie opens with a young man standing on a crate in an enclosure near rhe beach with a noose around his neck you tend to pay attention. Here stands Hank, played by the wonderful Paul Dano, about to end his life for whatever reason off the shore of a gorgeous beach! He must be miserable but we have no idea why. He kicks loose the crate but simultaneously sees a man’s body washed up at the shoreline. What to do? How does he escape mid suicide to save this other guy. An intriguing opening to a most enjoyable, perplexing, funny, sad, one of a kind film.
I have high praise for Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame for taking on the impossible role of the washed up body soon to be known as Manny. Radcliffe is so good that it is difficult to believe. There were times when he looked like Jerry Mahoney to Dano’s Paul Winchell if you can remember that far back.
This is a surreal, fantastical wild ride of a movie that will thrill some and perhaps utterly disgust others. Codirectors and cowriters Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have made a grand entrance with this effort and we will likely see more of them hopefully soon.
There are so many wonderful scenes along with refreshing dialogue that will keep you interested if not a bit befuddled. Life in all of its complexities is explored from many angles; love, loneliness, sex and sexuality and on and on.
Radcliffe and Dano share the screen for 95% of the movie and they do so grandly. I would love to see a compilation of the out takes. There had to be a whole lot of them when you have a talking, farting, jet skiing dead guy playing one of the leads!
I expect “Swiss Army Man” will not hit too many screens, nor have much of a run, but I encourage you to give it a try and to take a ride on the weird side of the street. Some will be glad they did.
i
