Swiss Army Man: Becoming your own Multi-Purpose Survival Tool
A (psycho)analysis of ‘Swiss Army Man’ that contains no plot synopsis and all the spoilers. Please only read if you’ve seen the film.
“Crazy. I’m fucking crazy. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it alone.”
It’s been a month now since I saw the absurdist existential fart drama Swiss Army Man in the cinema and I’m still finding it impossible to get out of my head. So I’m sitting down to write this review/meta in the form of a psychoanalysis of the central character, Hank. This film is entirely about who Hank is and what has gone wrong with Hank’s life. I can’t think of any other film that is so rooted in the subjective reality of its rather crazed central character. For the most part, other characters only exist as projections or creations of Hank’s mind. They are people who Hank escapes into to relieve his loneliness. Manny is always an extension of Hank, his puppet friend not his own person, though Manny actually reveals more about Hank than Hank does himself. We do not even see separate people in the film until the last fifteen minutes and their purpose is to act as spectators to Hank’s final moments of exposure and self-acceptance.
Not only are all the other characters facets of Hank, the landscape of the story is also a manifestation of Hank’s mental state. His three main settings in the story - marooned on a desert island, lost in a trash-filled forest and finally crawling back to civilization - represent the stages of Hank’s psychological progression. From suicidal isolation, to his search for connection (literally, with his phone signal) to facing reality and asking for help. His character is even reflected in the animals inhabiting the setting, mostly the racoon - a nocturnal creature who scavenges trash just as Hank is surviving on leftover food and utensils from the suburban neighborhood beyond his forest hideaway. At his costume party we see Hank dressed in animal furs with a nose and whiskers painted on his cheeks. The art design of the film is built by Hank and the music of the film comes directly from Hank’s mind, his own personal soundtrack. While ‘Swiss Army Man’ is a buddy movie on the surface at its core this is a film about the relationship we have with our own private ourselves - the relationship between our frantic minds inside our dying bodies. It’s a film about dealing with who you really are and finding your own personal magical tools to survive through life.
I’m going to break down my analysis of Hank by looking at how the other three significant characters of the film - Hank’s father, Sarah and Manny - are each inhabited by Hank and what Hank is actually revealing about himself during his time channeling each of these characters.
Hank as his Father
“He’s my dad, but he just doesn’t really want to show it sometimes.”
Hank’s first role-play in his relationship with Manny is that of a paternal figure. In the early part of the film Hank has his fatherly beard while Manny is physically childlike in the sense that he is immobile and needs to be carried everywhere by Hank. However, their first night in the cave, Hank takes on a more motherly role, cradling Manny in his arms and singing to him the same melody that his mother used to sing to him as a child. Hank channeling his more openly loving dead mother is what causes Manny to wake from his deceased state. But once Manny starts talking, Hank switches to the role of his father. When he scolds Manny, saying he sounds retarded, Hank immediately realizes “I sound like my dad”. He is shaming Manny for mumbling, inflicting the same emotional abuse that Hank suffered himself as a child. Hank tries to take back his judgemental parenting, tries to tell Manny it’s okay for him to be shy and awkward, revealing how his own dad obviously made Hank feel ashamed for his social anxiety issues. But when Hank is tasked with teaching the amnesiac Manny everything about life, explaining the world in the style of a parent to a child (with toys, puppet shows and dressing up), Hank continually slips into the father role. He teaches Manny that he should feel inhibited, that he shouldn’t say what’s in his head, that he shouldn’t sing on the bus and he shouldn’t fart in public.
When Hank teaches Manny about masturbation the stark difference between Hank’s two types of parenting is revealed. Manny simply perceives masturbation as an act of making yourself happy. Hank’s mother had a lighthearted accepting reaction to her son jacking off while his dad not only made him feel shame, but told Hank it would shorten his lifespan, putting the fear of death in him. When his mother died shortly after the masturbation row, not only did it cause Hank to experience sexual dysfunction (as he can no longer jack off without thinking of her) it is also a metaphor for how Hank can no longer love himself, no longer make himself happy, following the loss of his mother. Hank was a very anxious child and his mother was the one who stopped him from overthinking things. Without his mother’s presence, Hank and his dad drifted apart, so far apart that they now only send each other automated Birthday cards.
When Manny tells Hank that his dad must be worried and wondering where he is, Hank doesn’t seem convinced. On their return to civilization, Hank continues to inflict his own daddy issues on Manny. Hank scolds Manny for exhibiting his farts, his spit and erections in public - all things that Hank knows are Manny’s magical powers, but which he also knows society will view as weird and gross. At this point, Hank still doesn’t believe either Manny or himself (same difference) can be loved for who they truly are. Hank doesn’t let go of his shame till his dad arrives and is asked to identify the body in the bag. Hank deliberately hides from his dad, allowing him to think for a moment that his son has been found dead. Hank needs to know if his dad would really care if he died or not. It is only when he sees his father break down crying that Hank gains the courage to be his true self and say what he really feels. When Hank tells his dad that his mom would be happy that “somebody loves me”, I don’t think Hank is referring to Manny’s love. I think Hank is referring to his realization that his dad loves him after all. This realization comes after Hank ran away and almost killed himself because he was convinced that nobody loved him. With the knowledge of his dad’s love, Hank is able to apologize to Manny for screwing him up and he begs Manny not die. Hank is making the speech he wanted his father to make to him and he is experiencing the same fear of loss that he realizes his dad must’ve felt while he was missing. As his dad offers him a nod of silent acceptance, Hank forgives him for not being able to say these things out loud.
Hank as Sarah
“I’m sorry. You just seemed really happy and I wasn’t.”
After Hank has played the role of his father, reenacting his own childhood for Manny, Hank switches to playing the role of his crush, Sarah, so that Manny can experience Hank’s young adulthood and his first time falling in love. But the only form of love Hank knows comes from seeing this girl on the bus and imagining himself as a romantic hero in waiting - a lonely guy who’ll reach out to a lonely girl and then begin a life of domestic bliss with her. But due to his crippling social anxiety Hank never dared to talk to Sarah. He resorted to searching for her on social media, desperate to learn who his beautiful mystery girl was. Hank and Manny replay the yearning quest just to find out her name. But when Hank finally discovered Sarah on Instagram he learned that she already had a husband and a child and that all his romantic projections could never become a reality. This revelation turned his beautiful private love story into something shameful that he felt the need to hide. Unrequited love may be just as common to the human condition as farting, but society will judge Hank’s inappropriate infatuation with a married stranger to be weird and creepy. This is most likely how Hank judged himself. How he suddenly felt like Sarah’s stalker and how this was enough for Hank to send himself into exile and attempt suicide.
I don’t believe Hank was ever truly in love with Sarah. I think Hank was in love with the idea of Sarah, that she was his muse and that Hank saw Sarah as a beacon of happiness. When Hank finally finds the courage to talk to the real Sarah he apologizes and tries to explain his fixation saying: “You just seemed really happy and I wasn’t.” One reading of this line is that the happily married Sarah ruined Hank’s fantasy that he’d found someone who was just as alone as him. It could also be interpreted as Hank wishing he could be Sarah. And it’s the fantasy of being Sarah rather than being with Sarah that Hank plays out in the woods with Manny. Interpreting Hank as a latent queer character gives a whole new perspective on Hank’s cross-dressing and impersonating Sarah as he starts falling in love with Manny. For me, it’s particularly interesting to read Hank as being possibly transgender - it would explain a lot of Hank’s disgust at his own body, particularly his penis. When Manny experiences his first erection and finds it horrible, we’re being given an insight into how Hank reacted to his own first boner. When Hank is playing Sarah, he suddenly appears far more comfortable in his own skin. When Hank first puts on the dress and wig and Manny says he looks beautiful, he is flattered. He shaves off his beard. He falls into a female persona very naturally and seems instantly happier.
Hank is actually really uninterested to the images of the bikini-clad women in the sports magazine, indifferent to their “boobs, vaginas and butts”. It is not until he invents a story for these girls and imagines a romantic life with them that both Hank and Manny (same difference) get aroused. When he plays out his romantic fantasy with Manny in the woods, Hank doesn’t just play the role of Sarah the wife, but Sarah the mother. We see this in the Montage when Hank poses with Manny wearing Mickey Mouse ears. This is a moment taken directly from Sarah’s Instagram, a picture of her own child wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Hank seeks happiness by recreating the family unit he lost when his own mother died. He seemingly could be just as happy in the wife role as the husband role, just so long as he has love again. However when Hank gets so carried away with his fantasy that he almost drunkenly kisses Manny, he is overcome with shame again. Earlier Hank had snapped at Manny over what people would say back home “if they saw me dressed like this”. Hank doesn’t expect people to accept his sexuality and this drives Hank into a second suicide attempt when he crawls over a pipe above a ravine. When Hank and Manny fall, the rope coils around Hank’s neck again, like a noose. But Manny’s last words before they drop are that if they die “I might really miss you.” Hank had started to love the person he was becoming in Manny’s company. So instead of drowning in the river (and his latest flood of shame) Hank reaches for Manny and kisses him. Manny’s ever useful body breathes oxygen bubbles into Hank’s mouth, acting as his survival tool and life support. But the film doesn’t shy away from this kiss also being a romantic climax, one that’s followed by the absurdly homoerotic image of Hank literally riding Manny’s ass back to shore. From this point on, Hank is openly affectionate to Manny and he no longer feels the need to dress up as Sarah in order to playact their relationship hetero-normatively.
Hank as Manny
“I used to lie there. I used to be empty. Then you came along.”
Before I talk about what Manny is to Hank I want to talk about what Manny isn’t. In my opinion, Manny is not a figment of Hank’s imagination. Nor is Manny an ordinary corpse who Hank only imagines speaking and having superpowers. The film teases both these interpretations but ultimately shatters them by having other people witness Manny’s magical abilities at the end of the movie. Within the surrealist world of the story Manny really is a magical farting corpse. Like in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ when Gregor turns into a giant insect, he really does turn into a giant insect. No characters in this story are hallucinating. But that doesn’t mean we’re not meant to think about Manny what represents outside of the magical realist realm of the film. For me, the whole point of the story is to interpret what Manny and his Swiss army man powers really mean to Hank and to us as viewers. My interpretation is that Manny is a corporeal manifestation of Hank’s inner creative child. That Hank is an artist whose creative drive has been dead for a long time. Only when Hank’s on the verge of suicide does his creative child come back to life and inspire him to survive.
Of all the messages that Hank scribbles on trash and sends out to sea, the one that I find most upsetting is ‘I’m so bored’. When Hank tells Manny he thought Sarah would never want to be with him, he adds ‘I didn’t even want to be with me’. At the start of the film, Hank loathes his own company so much that he is planning to hang himself to escape it. But before he dies he is singing and he is longing for one final moment of beauty. What he gets instead is the spectacle of an ugly corpse washed up on the beach and loudly expelling gas. Hank sees no last moment of grace, only the final indignity of becoming a dead body. Manny is Hank’s own dead body. He’s the dead body that Hank’s destined to become if he commits suicide or starves in the wilderness. And Hank can’t accept that. Hank needs to believe that his disgusting dying body is capable of making beautiful magical things. It is Hank’s own suppressed desire to be special that fuels the fart-powered jet-ski that Manny’s dead body becomes. Manny is Hank’s savior in the shape of Hank’s greatest fear - his fear that he’ll die unloved and forgotten. Throughout the movie, Hank doesn’t lose his fear of becoming an anonymous corpse. He literally ties Manny to his back with the same rope that he was going to use for his noose. Manny is Hank’s own useless sack of shit to carry around. Manny is also Hank’s own personal miracle. And it’s thanks to Manny that Hank becomes wildly creative. He’s no longer bored.
As a magical movie entity, Manny could be compared to Clarence, the guardian angel from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, who talks George Bailey out of suicide. But Manny doesn’t act as a teacher to Hank. Manny is the curious one. It’s Manny who inspires Hank to create art, to tell stories, to sing and dance. Manny is an elaborate multi-purpose tool that is used first for Hank’s survival and then for his imaginative play. When they have their costume party in the woods, Manny is dressed up as a superhero because the creative powers that he’s shared are exactly what’s saving Hank’s life. Throughout the film Hank’s life only becomes endangered when he tries to silence Manny and Manny threatens to go back to being dead. The two times this happens, Hank is hunted and almost eaten by a bear. The second and most significant bear attack comes after Manny sees Sarah’s Instagram and realizes he was just a lonely loser weirdo who never had a chance with her. Manny’s tearful breakdown in this moment is a reenactment of the breakdown Hank surely experienced when he found out about Sarah’s happy life. This moment is when we see the dark side of Hank’s creative child. This is when we see the danger of Hank overthinking things. Manny becomes telepathic and fills Hank’s mind with morbid thoughts and traumatic triggers that neither of them can control. This existential crisis is so painful it almost leads Hank to give up on life again, to let his own darkness (in the form of the bear) consume him, before Manny saves him by lighting himself on fire to scare the bear away. This is when Hank and Manny really start to trade places - Manny becoming the parent figure and protector, while Hank (who has now has a leg injury) becomes helpless and needs to be carried. It’s after this last breakdown and self-endangerment that Manny makes the decision on Hank’s behalf that he has to go home and he needs to ask for help.
The news anchor calling Hank ‘Manny’ in his TV interview is another hint that Hank is now becoming Manny and is internalizing his powers. Not his magical abilities, but it is his love for Manny and his need to “not let them take him away” that leads Hank to completely expose his true self in front of Sarah, his father and a crowd of strangers. Hank’s powers are that he made so many beautiful things out of the trash he found in the woods. Sarah seems amazed that Hank “made all that”, even while she’s horrified by who Hank is. Because at the end of the film, Hank is a crazy starving man hugging a corpse like it’s his best friend. The cops put Hank in cuffs and lead him away and the cynics in the audience may wish the film had ended there. But instead it ends with a final moment of magic. The sort of magic that can only be created by a willingness to bear your soul. Hank exposes himself in all his ugliness and all his beauty and this allows him to perform his own miracle. Hank gets his own ‘Jurassic Park’ moment of bringing something that was dead back to life (Manny, himself, same difference) with Sarah as his Laura Dern saying “What the fuck?”
With this last line, the filmmakers allow their viewers to be Sarah in the end. It’s the only time in the movie that we are offered a character perspective other than Hank’s to identify with.The filmmakers give the viewer permission to step back and be weirded out by what they have just witnessed. It’s the Daniels who’ve exposed themselves with their ugly beautiful miracle of a film. We can just be onlookers if we like. But personally when I watch the last scene, I’m still Hank. This movie brought something back to life in me too.
