The Absurdism of Daniels in Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once
Spoilers for both Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
In 2016, I saw a movie called Swiss Army Man. Its advertising made the appeal clear: Paul Dano has an adventure with the farting and talking corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. “Outrageous,” “gross,” and possibly “stupid” were adjectives I was expecting to describe the film as.
The film starts with the splashing of water, and pieces of garbage floating on an ocean. A juice box reads “HELP ME.” A tiny makeshift boat of twigs and a shopping bag reads “I am so bored.” A plastic bottle reads “I don’t want to die alone.” The first image of Paul Dano’s character, Hank, is him on a deserted island, standing on a wooden box at the front of a cave. Hanging from the top of the cave is a rope fashioned to be a noose. Hank weakly hums as he ties it around his neck.
“What am I watching?”, is what I start thinking. The farting corpse movie opens with its main character attempting suicide? That’s not what I signed up for. But, here’s what was strange: I didn’t dislike it at all. I was curious, intrigued even. Where on Earth could this possibly go?
Before Hank can kill himself, he notices the corpse of Manny, played by Daniel Radcliffe, at the edge of the island. As Manny convulses from flatulence, he starts drifting into the ocean, his farts ballooning his pants to act as a raft. The quiet hums from Hank crescendo, vocalization from him matching the film’s acapella score. Hank mounts Manny and rides him like a jet ski.
This is the opening of Swiss Army Man. I am uncomfortable. I am also a total mess of laughter, and completely glued to the screen.
Swiss Army Man is directed by two men, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who go by the joint name “Daniels.” Six years after their debut feature, their long-awaited follow-up, Everything Everywhere All at Once, has become a critical and audience darling. As of this article’s publication, the martial arts action comedy is one of the highest-rated on both IMDb and Letterboxd, and one of the very few films in recent memory to have next to no weekly losses in box office grosses. So shortly after its release, Everything Everywhere All at Once is on track to be one of the most renowned works of modern cinema. Totally unexpected. For others, not me.
What I got from Swiss Army Man opened me to the special magic of Daniels’ filmmaking. Now with another feature film to compare it to, I have what I believe to be the (not so) secret sauce to the strength of their works: Absurdism.
The Oxford dictionary defines absurdism as “the belief that humans exist in a world with no purpose or order” and “deliberately strange or silly behavior or character.” On a microscale, the latter definition accurately describes the style of comedy and aesthetic within Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once. In the world of Swiss Army Man, a corpse can speak, grow magnetic erections, and become a multitude of weapons and tools akin to a Swiss Army knife. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the multiverse not only exists, but is so wide and diverse that people can have hot dogs for fingers, and a raccoon can cook food and be voiced by Randy Newman. Most would read those statements and raise an eyebrow or crack a smile.
That is, however, only the surface of how Daniels uses absurdism. On a macroscale, in relation to the former definition, the chaos and seeming lack of logic within the films is not simply for comedic effect. Absurdism is the mechanism to drive their stories forward, and I even personally believe it is used directly towards an audience to further connect them to the drama and the conflicts within Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Negative feelings and internal conflicts are at the core of both films. As previously mentioned, Hank in Swiss Army Man is suicidal and possibly experiencing gender dysphoria through his connection to Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a woman whose photo is his phone’s wallpaper. As a means to help him get back to civilization, Manny is led on by Hank to develop romantic feelings towards Sarah, believing that the phone is his and that he and Sarah are destined to be together. These conflicts are portrayed in such a way by the dialogue and the actors that, although they are surrounded by gross-out humor, the drama is sincere and weighty.
Everything Everywhere All at Once focuses on the Wang family. Matriarch and protagonist Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is low on money, has trouble connecting with others, and questions how her life could have been different. Stephanie Hsu plays double duty as Joy, Evelyn’s daughter frustrated with the treatment of her sexuality and her unspoken feelings of depression, and Jobu Tupaki, the film’s antagonist and an amalgamation of all multiversal versions of Joy. Evelyn and Joy are the two primary characters of the film. Even on the side though, father and husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) struggles with connecting to his wife Evelyn, leading to him considering divorce. A multiversal variant of Evelyn’s father and Joy’s grandpa, Gong Gong (James Hong) believes the only way to save the multiverse is to murder Jobu and Joy, and to stop Evelyn from trying to save both.
Although more overt in Swiss Army Man, the weightiest concepts the two films of Daniels weigh with are as follows: First, how do we deal with meaninglessness on a personal scale? Second, how are we supposed to apply ourselves to the world? Absurdism is often connected to two other concepts: Nihilism, the belief that life is ultimately meaningless and moral values are mere complications, and existentialism, the philosophy focused on finding meaning within our seemingly empty world devoid of certainty. Nihilism is the grand lesson that Jobu Tupaki looks to show Evelyn, wanting her to join in the ultimate collapse of the universe through her “everything bagel” black hole. Hank starts his story so devoid of personal meaning that he is willing to take his own life, and even Manny in the climax of Swiss Army Man briefly hits a curb of nihilism when the truth about Sarah is revealed. At their most fractured, the characters of both films are faced with this predicament: If nothing matters, then why care about anything?
Initially, absurdism is used on the audiences of both films to knock them off their center of gravity. Serious discussions about topics as heavy as life and death can be difficult to have. Personal walls get in the way of speaking on them truthfully and unabashedly. By presenting these topics in a manner that exposes how absurd seemingly mundane things can be with just minor tweaks to how they are done (for example, in Everything Everywhere All at Once, hot dog fingers limit the function of hands but greatly increases the function of feet), any pretensions once held by audiences melt away. Not only is the confrontation with life and death now in a more open space, the absurdity even makes the emotional poignancy of the drama within Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All At Once more poignant.
With how this is achieved in the films themselves, the absurdity of situations is openly recognized by the characters and then used as a way for them to work through their conflicts. During the climax of Swiss Army Man, when Manny has processed his connection to Hank and living itself after Hank says he still feels like he is a “scared, ugly, useless person,” Manny responds, “Maybe everyone's a little bit ugly. And maybe we're all just ugly, dying sacks of shit, and maybe all it'll take is one person to just be okay with that, and then the whole world will be dancing and singing and farting, and everyone will feel a little bit less alone.” This gets through to Hank, and leads to the resolution of the film.
During the climax of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Evelyn initially agrees with the proposition from Jobu that “Nothing matters.” She gives up. Her and alternative versions of herself disrupt the flow of their universes, seemingly providing the nihilism needed for the everything bagel black hole to open, and for Jobu to enter it. However, through the belief of Waymond that the ultimate point of life is to be kind and compassionate towards others, Evelyn’s drive changes. Instead of forcing Jobu and her minions away from their goal through conflict and violence, Evelyn uses kindness, understanding, and love as their own weapons. In every universe, Evelyn is still Joy’s mother. What Jobu needs is not an enemy, but her mother.
This leads to the resolution of both films. At the end of Swiss Army Man, an assortment of people, including a news team, Sarah and her family, and Hank’s father find themselves in the woods where Hank and Manny have been living throughout the film. They end up on the beach, as Hank wishes to release Manny back into the ocean. Cornered, Hank speaks to how Manny was able to help him through their time together, and is no longer concerned with being judged or overwhelmed by how he is perceived by others. Hank, to truly show this, lets out his own fart, after having hidden them from Manny. Manny then lets out one final cacophony of gas, Hank whispers something inaudible to Manny, and Manny rides on the water into the distance, Hank smiling as he does. The reactions from the others to what happens range from amusement to disgust, but it is Hank and Manny who got what they needed, and that is enough.
In Everything Everywhere All at Once, after Evelyn defeats the minions of Jobu through that aforementioned combat through kindness, Joy is finally cornered in a way where she and Evelyn can have a true one-on-one conversation. Evelyn, after allowing Gong Gong to know Joy’s sexuality, still voices her more negative feelings about Joy, but it comes from a place of love and care instead of judgment. Despite the multiverse having shown the wide possibilities of where she could be instead, Evelyn now knows and tells Joy that there is nowhere else she would be than where she is now: With her family, just how they are. “Nothing matters.” was a phrase once said by Jobu to permit nihilism. Now, “Nothing matters.” is said by Evelyn as a means of affection, as she embraces Joy, the two crying.
There, not unlike in Swiss Army Man, the key to finding purpose and accepting absurdity in a confusing and logic-free world is recognition that no one is ever truly alone. Being able to see the absurdity of love, of our flaws and our mistakes, is not the solution to the woes of the world. But, it is a piece of the puzzle to being able to improve. You are permitted to laugh at the ridiculousness the world offers while still seeing its beauty. Through that comes the knowledge that kindness and compassion are not things that should be done simply because they are the “right” thing to do. Rather, in this swirling chaos of doubt and uncertainty, they are essential. When these characters needed it, however absurd their journeys to it were, Hank and Manny, and the Wang family, were there for each other.
I believe that in the eyes of Daniels, absurdism is not just a vehicle for visual gags and gross-out comedy. It is integral to open, honest, and loving conversations about death and the woes of the world. Absurdism was the gateway to offering two answers to existentialism in these movies. From Swiss Army Man: be the person that you are, unafraid to be judged no matter how “weird” you are. Embrace your imperfections instead of rejecting them. From Everything Everywhere All at Once: take the initiative to be kind and compassionate to others not because you have to but because you always can be both. Know you are never truly alone.
Manny saves Hank, Evelyn saves Joy, and they and everyone around them are better by the time their absurd stories have ended. Look around your own life. Consider how ridiculous things around you may be. Give yourself over to absurdism. Life is not a joke so much as there can be enjoyment and even comfort in the absurd. With so much uncertainty about our lives, and how structure gets fractured no matter how much we try to maintain it, the acknowledgment of meaninglessness is not just for nihilists. Rather, to welcome life wholly, why not be an absurdist?
