“Everything Everywhere All at Once” was the big winner of the Oscar 2023 and also won the hearts of many audiences. However, directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who call themselves the Daniels, have already shown with their directorial debut that bizarre stories are in their blood. “Swiss Army“ is currently free for a few days, namely until April 15, 2023 the media library of the TV channel Tele 5 as flowing.
“Swiss Army Man” with “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe
Hank (Paul Dano) is stranded on a deserted island. Full of desperation, he wants to commit suicide, were it not for a dead body that has washed ashore preventing him from his plan. From that moment on, he drags the corpse, who is given the name Manny (Daniel Radcliffe), everywhere with him in the hope of finding civilization. The new friend is literally an excellent Swiss army knife, especially when Hank needs a drinking water dispenser. Or a compass. Or a motorboat…
One day, when Hank shows Manny a picture on his cell phone of a beautiful woman he has always had a crush on, they both decide to get off the island. It’s the start of a great adventure to find Hank’s love – at any cost.
minimalism and maximalism
Aside from the fact that the stories told are incredibly whimsical, the Daniels’ two movies, Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once, couldn’t be more different. While this year’s Oscar winner explores all cinematic possibilities and gives the audience a true sensory overload, “Swiss Army Man” is completely different.
The basic idea turns out to be quite simple here, but everything is teased out of it. A shipwrecked sailor seeks the love of his life with a “strange” friend – that’s how the story could be summed upbut this in no way does the film justice.
The story is a lot like “Cast Away” – I can hear you thinking that, but you’d be surprised how different the two movies turn out to be. This is probably due in the first place to the bizarre humor that runs like a thread through the film.
The actual story is even quite irrelevant from a point and you quickly get the impression that you rarely go to the cinema: this is not just a story squeezed into a movie. It makes sense that the Daniels made a movie that deliberately defies convention and was made solely to serve up something new and fresh to audiences.
Unique balance between humor and warmth
The question of whether the talking corpse is just Hank’s imagination does not really arise due to the humor and seriousness. It deals far too much with themes such as friendship, love, life and death. Not to mention how much they both learn from each other, not just about the world but about themselves. Isolated moments that loosen things up with faecal humor and other macabre gags round off the tragic comedy as a whole perfectly.
Whether it’s the maximalist “Everything Everywhere All At Once” or the minimalism à la “Swiss Army Man”, the Daniels understood how to capture the magic of life in the cinema. Her The directorial debut is just as rewarding as the Oscar winner. One thing that only becomes clear towards the end makes “Swiss Army Man” even better.
That’s why “Swiss Army Man” is even better than “EEAO”
After the initial shock of landing alone on an island, things change as the movie progresses. The beaches and forests now seem almost romantic. It is a big contrast if you compare the paradise island of the bizarre male duo with life in the inhabited world, which is supposedly so desirable.
The Daniels come to a memorable verdict: the island combines all the romance, fantasy and almost utopian thoughts that make us love cinema so much. Civilized life, on the other hand, looks at the male duo with suspicious eyes. The men are staged in a weird and disgusting way, but so is the film as a whole. However, with all the weirdness and strangeness, a great cinematic charm constantly shines through.