The law of diminishing returns is discussed in length during the duration of Swiss Army Man, and might happen to be the only reason that some (including myself) will find it less genius than those who are less attuned to the emotions that Swiss Army Man is dealing in. That said it is pretty original. Paul Dano ends up on an island and must use the body of dead Daniel Radcliffe to escape and survive in the wild while developing a friendship with the corpse. Sounds like a Sunday afternoon movie in America right? Right? Well, here’s the point that I want to get to fast. Swiss Army Man is a stupendous, emotional, and beautiful film, and is so effortlessly those things that the only thing that’s worth criticizing in the movie, and that would make for a review structure that doesn’t read like, “the acting’s great, the direction may have a universal flaw but you get what you get, the script is great, and the ending is the stuff of dreams when it comes to true visual thinking and taking a concept to its full potential” is the discussion of how overall Swiss Army Man just isn’t quite as original as it lets on. It’s a movie about the folly of life in the presence of loneliness, and when observed through the way it allows us to catch onto that, while the premise is creative and mind tickling, the inner thematic concept is not and therefore can’t be as emotionally satisfying. This is a personal opinion, though. Swiss Army Man is a film that should be studied and is a complete revelation, but it seemed to be telling me things that I’d already known in a way that I had already seen. The spin on such things in that only one of the main characters is alive is executed well enough to keep this from becoming wholly apparent, but when the film reaches what might be its logical emotional climax I realized that I’d seen that type of scene in many works of theatre and film and here it didn’t hit me quite as hard. The way the film literalizes everything about its also takes it down a notch. There’s so much drama that could have been informed by the visual metaphors that are still present in the film but seems to be taken so literal and less dreamlike to the point of almost dissipating. That might actually be a complaint in direction, and cinematography but those are pretty visionary all around, so it’s hard to find fault in them. Swiss Army Man is a film that’s going to make a lot of people hurt. It’ll dig up the shit that the systems of the modern world put them in and make them confront that in themselves in a weird, but familiar way. The weighted message of the entire piece is brought down from greatness by the literalizing of the entire thing, and the familiarity of the themes, but the potency should be extreme for anyone who hasn’t encountered these types of emotions before. The law of diminishing returns struck me, and while this is a stupendous, emotional, and beautiful film it felt a slight bit diminished. Swiss Army Man gets an 8.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |