SWISS ARMY MAN Trailer
Have we all let the farting corpse premise sink into our bones enough to not get distracted? Remember, a movie is not its pitch or its three-line synopsis or even its trailer. The conversation about Swiss Army Man seems to be getting stuck on these points, and as eye-catching as they are, it’s leaving us in danger of settling for knee-jerk reactions instead of giving the movie an honest chance.
Earning both the Directing Award and a number of walkouts at the Sundance Film Festival, Swiss Army Man seems to be skirting the line between a few genres. The inability to stick it in a clean box inherently turns some people off, but considering its trailer hints at a number of inexplicable events that go way beyond a multi-purpose corpse (Paul Dano’s character also seems to have a cell phone whose battery never dies) it will likely fall most cleanly under the umbrella of absurdist fiction.
However, even that classification is tainted by its association with more high-brow, thoughtful attacks on societal norms from people like Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. What people often forget is that the umbrella also covers lighter fare, stories that still have a point but are more interested in mining the weird humor than driving home a large critique. My favorite example of this has long been Christopher Moore’s book “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove”, which is about exactly what it sounds like (a town of clinically depressed people are visited by a sea beast that increases their libido and eats them). I’m guessing that Swiss Army Man is going to be closer to Moore than Camus, but that doesn’t make it bad.
Not everyone will be willing to suspend this much disbelief for some laughs, but some of us are tickled by all the weirdness. I’m not saying that I don’t anticipate problems. The film is made by a duo of first-time feature writer/directors, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the film has a shaggy plot. That’s not a killer for this kind of movie, though, as long as the film keeps its sense of humor firmly intact. Somehow, I doubt that’s going to be an issue here.
Swiss Army Man is directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. It stars Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. It will be released in the U.S. on June 24th, 2016. International release dates are not currently known.
Do you enjoy absurdist humor? Do you think this is what Swiss Army Man is trying to be? Let us know in the comments!
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