Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man’s been getting buzz since its premiere at Sundance in January; know as the “Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie,” it ended up with positive reviews, despite the initial walkouts. It’s almost entirely a two man show; Paul Dano is Hank, who is stuck on a desert island, ready to commit suicide. He’s stopped by the appearance of Manny (Radcliffe), the aforementioned farting corpse, and together they bond while trying to find their way home. The premise would actually make a pretty cool video game: teach your dead friend about life (and its joys) to unlock various abilities which are then used in puzzles to progress toward home. But the film is more than just an epic fart joke; it’s about why we bother to try at all, with a darkly comic lens. Life (and your body) is super gross, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of that, and there really is stuff worth sticking around for. Connections with other (gross) people make life worth it.

Frustratingly, it chooses to represent isolation in the weakest way possible: unrequited love. “Love” isn’t even applicable -- it’s infatuation to a creepy point. The Girl is the symbol of meaningful connection, and romance is apparently the backbone of life. While Hank eventually figures out that friendship is just as meaningful through his journey with Manny, a large majority of time is spent focusing on The Girl as the reason to be. The Girl that Hank’s pretty much stalking, considering he’s only seen her on the bus and yet knows her full name, regularly checks her instagram and has a creepshot of her as his phone home screen. It’s past time we stopped portraying petty male infatuatiomn as love; Paulette and the UPS guy from Legally Blonde had more interaction than Hank and Sarah, and Paulette could barely string two words together around him. Swiss Army Man eventually does acknowledge that Hank is being really creepy, but it’s sort of offhand, more of a funny background event. Hank’s entire view of life is based off of her. Exploring how his upbringing helped make him so insular would have been much more interesting; the snippets we get are heartbreaking and grossly funny. But instead ‘tfw no gf’ is used as shorthand for the most terrible loneliness.

Personally, I think that shorthand contributes to the Nice Guy dynamic; infatuation and making romance The Holy Goal is so normalized that without it, you must be Lonely and Miserable and Incomplete, so why can’t Girls understand that you need to be complete? You don’t have to know her or care about how she feels, because nobody deserves to feel Incomplete, and only a total jerk would actively deny happiness to someone else. Therefore, a Girl who won’t even go out with you once is being a total asshole to you!

It’s also disappointing because the directors (who also wrote the script) do seem to get the crushing isolation that causes (and is caused by) depression. Hank’s detachment from his father shows how a gap can become an impassible crevasse, and even the anecdote about his mother is the sort of small bullshit that somehow makes itself really meaningful in your life. We also assume that he has no friends (although it’s never explicitly stated) and that has a ton of impact on you, both growing up and as an adult. Hank’s issues that have lead him to suicide are about initiating relationships and opening up, and there’s so much more to that than romance. Hank was on a desert island before he ran away, and “deserted” doesn’t just mean The Girl isn’t there.

I suppose I wouldn’t be so sensitive if the suicidal state of mind weren’t portrayed so accurately (and with the appropriate amount of humor.) What stops Hank from hanging himself? Some random guy washes up on shore that he can at least talk to. Except when Hank goes to approach him, he forgets about the noose and almost dies anyway. The realization that the person who stopped him was actually a farting corpse? Back to plan S with a stronger noose. But wait -- the farts are useful! Farts saving his life is lowbrow as hell, but the dumbest things can get you out of that mindset. All the scatological humor fits perfectly with the absurdities of life, presented in a less morbid fashion. Just as the dumbest thing can develop into a hangup years later, the silliest thing may lift you up just enough to keep going on.