Swiss Army Man

Year 12, Day 289 - 10/15/20 - Movie #3,675

BEFORE: It's three in a row for Daniel Radcliffe, as he carries over from "The Woman in Black" - and that's really the most of Daniel Radcliffe I've had around here, not since the days of the "Harry Potter" films.  I'm realizing now that only three of the "Harry Potter" films were reviewed here, so I must have binge-watched the first five films in that series before 2009, and then only reviewed the post-2009 films when they became available to me in 2010, 2011 and 2012.  That's weird, because I thought they were all part of my countdown, so I must be mis-remembering.  Mandela Effect!  

I remember this film getting some buzz a couple years ago, simply because of the curiosity factor - once you read the tagline, you may immediately think, "Hmm, well, how's THAT going to work?" and that alone is sometimes enough to get people to show up or tune in, I have to admit that I'm rather intrigued.  All I know about this is that one major character is dead for at least most of the film, I know it's probably not an outright "horror" film but I'm hoping the subject is at least macabre enough to qualify it for an October slot.

THE PLOT: A hopeless man stranded on a deserted island befriends a dead body and together they go on a surreal journey to get home. 

AFTER: It's a quirk of human anatomy that after we die, certain things happen to our bodies, namely the expulsion of bodily waste, and then later as decomposing gases build up, they also leave the body, in one of two ways.  Yes, as anyone who's worked in a morgue or funeral parlor can tell you, bodies can fart and even moan after death.  This has everything to do with acoustics, as air passing over the vocal cords and, umm, coming out the other way generates sound, and thus it's nothing more than a leftover illusion of life.  Something that happened every day while someone was alive can continue for a short time after death, but by no means should this be taken as any kind of conscious communication. 

In this film, however, Hank finds a dead body while he's stranded on an island, and he uses this expulsion of air, plus manually manipulating the corpse's mouth, to generate a mock form of communication.  Big NITPICK POINT, this wouldn't really work by any stretch of the imagination, because there's more to speech than just pushing air out from the lungs and moving the jaw - speech also comes from motions of the tongue, lips and so forth.  Even if this could work, the results would be disappointing.  

It's an intriguing idea, perhaps, especially when it comes to casting a film, who do you get to play a corpse that can (sort of) talk?  And maybe as a challenge for an actor, how does one pull this off, staring straight ahead during the entire filming process, showing no expression or emotion, not being able to move around in a relatable human way.  There's a potential joke here about Daniel Radcliffe's performance in the first two "Harry Potter" films, because all kid actors are terrible.  All of them.  Maybe an actor needs to keep pushing himself, though, and after you've been the star of an extremely successful franchise, maybe there's just nowhere to go but down.  And playing dead must be tricky, God knows we've seen enough "movie mistakes" where you can see the person playing a corpse breathing or blinking his eyes.  

But as the film wears on, the corpse here (named "Manny" by the probably-insane Hank) slowly regains some of the abilities he had during life.  Perhaps it's for the sake of shorthand film language, but we only see Hank manipulate Manny's mouth the first few times he "talks", and after that, it's something of a given that there's still air in Manny's lungs, neither his lungs nor vocal cords have decomposed enough to prevent this mock speech from happening, and there's still enough brain matter left to form words and coherent thought.  It's odd that Manny can't really remember anything from his life, but Hank's convinced it's in there somewhere, and he just has to teach Manny enough about human society to drag it out.  

This leads to extremely absurdist scenes of Hank and Manny in the woods, where instead of attempting to locate and rejoin human society, Hank has crafted an elaborate teaching area, with models of planes, automobiles and other common devices from the trash he's found near their campsite.  Jesus,  in the time it took him to build all that, he could have chosen any direction and walked that way until he found a hiking trail or a road or a fast-food restaurant parking lot, I'm thinking.  So perhaps Hank doesn't really WANT to be rescued, he would rather stay in the woods, with a corpse, teaching it some basic concepts about human relationships, and that's when it feels like maybe Hank's got some issues that he's trying to resolve. 

This leads to Hank putting on a rough mop-like reddish wig and adopting the personality of "Sarah", because he thinks that Manny once had a relationship with someone of that name, and he wants to recreate the experience of riding on a bus (yes, he builds a bus) and watching the cityscape go by (yes, he builds a mock cityscape) when Sarah gets on the bus.  Soon we're dealing with an even weirder love triangle of sorts, with Hank switching in and out of the "Sarah" character, so therefore playing two corners of the love triangle, so...is Hank in love with Manny, either as himself or as Sarah?  Yeah, it looks like we're gonna go there.  Look, I know that in many ways this is my Year of Weird Movies, but this is too far, too weird.  We've gone over the edge, off the rails for sure here.  

The title comes from all of the many uses that Hank finds for a dead guy - which range from using his farts to start fires, shooting BBs out of his mouth to simulate a gun and kill forest animals to eat, and somehow launching a pogo stick with a rope from his esophagus to work as a grappling hook and get them out of the ravine they seem to have fallen into.  None of it's technically possible, nor is riding a corpse like a jet-ski and using its repeated flatulence to get back to the mainland.  So what, exactly is really going on here?  Are we just along for the ride as Hank descends into madness?  Or is this all some kind of satire that's designed to get us all to take death less seriously?  

Worst of all, this film can't seem to make up its mind - is Hank a suicidal loner who dropped out of society, then took an opportunity to defile a dead body he found, over and over again, or did he somehow unlock the secret of bringing a dead man back to life, sort of?  Unfortunately, neither of those choices is very good, if we're talking about developing and crafting a narrative, and turning that into an entertaining story, so let's throw in more flatulence jokes and other near-slapstick to distract everyone.  It's just a terrible idea that went nowhere good and found an even more terrible ending.  

This film won Best Directing at the Sundance Festival?  How the hell did THAT happen?  Have standards there fallen so low, or was this somehow a reflection that, in the jury's opinion, the director took a story that seemed unfilmable and somehow managed to film it?  That in itself does not constitute "well-made", merely "made", but perhaps this somehow just reflects an "A" for effort on the behalf of the directors?  I've seen enough movies at Sundance to know what sort of thing the audiences there go for - sometimes they'll support something very "edgy" just to make a point, or to try to stand out from all the other festivals that might be inclined to award much "safer" choices.  

Was the elevator pitch for this one "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's"?

Also starring Paul Dano (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (last seen in Gemini Man"), Timothy Eulich, Marika Casteel, Richard Gross, Antonia Ribero, Aaron Marshall, Andy Hull, Shane Carruth

RATING: 2 out of 10 Instagram posts