At the heart of it all, Swiss Army Man is a near perfectly executed film about relationships. Delivered with equal parts juvenile humor and scatalogical compassion, the movie is about how relationships are about two people influencing each other and laughing at each other and finding strength in each other’s vulnerabilities. And it’s about how exciting that is, and how scary that is, and how beautiful that is. Hank tries to get this corpse to recall his past the only way he knows how: teaching him about his own. Manny washes up on the beach as a blank canvas, but through their time together he starts to learn what it’s like to see the world through Hank’s lens… or what it’s like to see the world at all. Hank teaches Manny the way the world works based off of his perception of it - what are essential teachings for Manny are just childhood lessons that Hank learned. He tells him about Jurassic Park, about which words are okay to say in public, about the songs that his mom used to sing him before bed so he wouldn’t overthink things. It’s around the moment where Manny asks Hank about masturbation that you realize he’s starting to become his own person… and it’s around the moment where Manny asks Hank if he’s trying to get back home so he can find love that you realize Manny is more than just a compass.

The film affects me so deeply not just because of how magical it is to witness two people finding value in themselves through finding love in each other, but because its outlook on humanity is so overwhelmingly optimistic. It’s based on this firm idea that the world is lonely and judgemental and we’re all going to ostracize and hurt each other and you can let life take its course or you can stand up and fart in public and tell someone that you love them and be weird and stupid and open and that is how you change the world: by loving deeply and by farting loudly.