 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Swiss Army Man • Year: 2016 • Country: USA • Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert • Main cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elisabeth Winstead • Runtime: 97 minutes • Production company: Blackbird, Cold Iron Pictures, Tadmor • TRAILER |
Now we get to a controversial movie: because winning the Best Feature Length Film Award at Sitges Film Festival 2016 in the Official Fantàstic Competition (as well as being nominated for many other awards and winning among them the Directing Award at Sundance Film Festival 2016) isn’t enough to escape a completely divided audience wherever it is screened. Being part of the fantasy genre, it’s a title certainly difficult to categorise.
Is it a film made for serious, or is it a comedy? Makes it sense to mix so much laughs with tears? Will one of its main characters -the flatulent corpse, played by Daniel Radcliffe, who also won the Best Actor Prize at Sitges- be reminded for his epic or for being lame? Maybe what directors Daniels said about they wanted to make a film where “the first fart makes you laugh and the last fart makes you cry”, which apparently attracted Paul Dano from the beginning, comes in handy when talking about this movie.
Swiss Army Man is one of those movies you will either love it or hate it. Part of the audience at Sundance walked out of the screening, while part of those who stayed surely enjoyed it as the rare, original piece it is. Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (aka Daniels), the two men had an extensive career as music video artists, which gave them the chance to experiment before this his first feature film. We can certainly tell by the look and feel of some scenes, a certain magic in the editing, and the great musical presence all along the film (with an acapella sound track by Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra and Robert McDowell, and performed mainly by both actors Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe).
The story is about a castaway that has lost his faith in being rescued (or in life) when he finds a corpse full of flatulences that helps his way out of the island where he’s been forgotten, and acts as a swiss army knife while finding his way back to civilisation. Yes, it sounds crazy. But the comparison with the tool is no accident: the corpse cuts, stores water, serves as a compass, and even more important: keeps company to our lonely survivor, who little by little regains strength and faith that his life is worth living.
Filmed in 22 days, with some epic scenes that will last in our minds and with some big laughs, this unpredictable, unprecedented story makes his way through an isolated primitive nature, a good background for a lost man to rediscover and revalue himself. Even on this the “swiss army man” plays an important role, as the efforts for keeping somebody’s moral up (and sometimes even keeping him alive) is sometimes easier than the ones we’re able to dedicate for ourselves; therefore the fight to revive the feelings in the corpse. As in many other stories, love gives us the strength to move on, and although my feelings for (and during the movie) are many, the main one is also made of love and admiration for having gone for such a risky, creative project.
With the presence of Mary Elisabeth Winstead (Death Proof (2007), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)) and the cameo of Shane Carruth (Primer (2004), Upstream Color (2013)), I don’t need any more backup to tell you it’s a movie worth going for. At least you probably haven’t seen anything like this before. And about the last fart…well, I must say, Daniels, it did work.
RATE: 7,5/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4034354
