10 Years Ago, Two Indie Juggernauts Got Off To A Flatulent Start
Swiss Army Man has way more fart and boner jokes than you might expect from two future Oscar-winning directors.
When Everything Everywhere All at Once became a sensation in the spring of 2022, for many viewers it seemed like the movie had come out of nowhere. But although it was their first movie to break through into the mainstream — and certainly the first to receive any kind of awards attention — EEAAO was actually Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s second feature film together as directors. The first, Swiss Army Man, was released six years earlier by a then-emerging distributor called A24. And what it lacks in Michelle Yeoh and multiverses, it makes up for in fart and boner jokes and the most bizarre role of Daniel Radcliffe’s career.
Radcliffe was in what you might call a transitional period in 2016. Six years after wrapping up his run as the titular boy wizard in the Harry Potter movies, he was doing the thing that former child stars often do: reinventing himself as an actor through a combination of serious stage work and out-there film roles. By this point, Radcliffe had already starred in a handful of horror movies. But Swiss Army Man was something different, using an unclassifiable mix of genres to tell a story that, from anything but its protagonist’s delusional perspective, is grotesque and completely horrifying.
Future Riddler Paul Dano co-stars as Hank, a castaway on a remote island who’s given up hope of ever seeing another human being when we meet him in the opening scene. Then Manny (Radcliffe) washes up on the beach, and Hank is overjoyed. Finally, a companion! The two then spend the rest of the movie becoming best friends, creating an elaborate fantasy world for themselves out of sticks and bark as they try to remember what their lives were like before they were stranded. All very cute and wholesome, right? Sure, except that Manny is already dead. Or is he?
Although he spends a lot of the movie being dragged around by his limp arms and jerked around on strings like a rotten marionette, when Hank is around, Manny seems alive. His mouth moves when he talks, and although he’s forgotten everything he knew before — including why people think farts are so gross and weird — his positive attitude and sense of childlike wonder make him a joy to be around. It’s a difficult role, blending absurdity, sincerity, and a lot of potty humor. (Manny is the “Swiss Army Man” because his stiff limbs and gassy orifices can be used as tools.) But alongside the equally committed Dano, Radcliffe manages to sell this bizarre premise — until Kwan and Scheinert pull the rug out from underneath viewers, making us question everything that we’ve seen up to that point.
It’s not quite as cohesive as Everything Everywhere All at Once — the humor is a little edgier, which makes the sentimental parts feel more cynical and insincere by comparison. The music, which can best be described as stomp-clap instrumentals overlaid with ironic a capella, is also very of its time. You have to be able to tolerate a certain level of millennial quirk to really enjoy it, in other words, but as an artifact of peak 2010s indie-film culture that somehow works despite the many barriers it puts in its own way, Swiss Army Man is worth a watch.
Kwan and Scheinert’s feature debut is also significant because it was released fairly early on in the history of A24. Founded in 2012, by 2016 the New York-based distributor was known as a place where up-and-coming filmmakers could build careers — one year earlier, The Witch had been a great success for both A24 and first-time director Robert Eggers — but it wasn’t yet the indie juggernaut that it is today. Although it performed modestly at the box office, Swiss Army Man helped build this reputation: A24 took Radcliffe’s life-sized, lifeless stunt double on tour as part of a buzzy PR campaign, prompting bemused articles from journalists like Inverse’s Jordan Zakarin.
Just a few years later, the second collaboration between A24 and the Daniels would sweep awards season, winning seven Oscars and elevating both the studio and the filmmakers to a new level of fame and prestige in the industry — an unlikely twist for the team behind the farty boner corpse movie.
