Swiss Army Man: Is Hank the Bad Guy?

 

I want to start this post off by saying that I really enjoyed Swiss Army Man. It was a film that I had never heard of before and I had no idea what to expect going in. I thought the acting and storytelling were great, and the film was a lot deeper than I initially thought it would be. 

What has been on my mind the most since finishing the film in class this morning is the ending, specifically how I want to interpret it. I think that the film was real and not just some figment of Hank's imagination, but I am not sure if this means that Hank is good. 

By real, I mean that Hank actually did find Manny washed up on the shore, and used him to survive in the various ways that he did. I don't know if Manny was actually able to talk or if this part of him was just Hank's imagination. My view is that Manny was an actual dead body who did all of the actions we see but couldn't physically talk. I think the dialogue we see between Hank and Manny is Hank's consciousness being projected through the corpse. This could be a hallucination as a result of dehydration or hunger, or simply Hank's imagination. I think the idea of Manny being able to physically do things but not talk is supported by the final scene, where Manny is not talking at all, but still manages to fart his way out to sea.

The ending of this film causes us to question Hank and whether or not he is a good person. Throughout the film we sympathize with Hank and can relate to his various insecurities and anxieties. Hank deals with the things that made him feel so isolated in life, and we as an audience are rooting for him to get back to the real world with his newfound revelations.

Yet in the ending it is revealed to us that some of Hank's issues are more extreme than we are initially told. The girl that we assume to be Manny's wife/girlfriend is actually a girl that Hank has been stalking and that is phone is full of photos of her. It is also shown that the majority of the film takes place in the woods directly behind this woman's house, and that the distance Manny and Hank cover from the sea through the woods is much smaller than it seemed during the film. 

In my mind, this could be a suggestion that Hank at some point decided to live in the woods as a way to stalk this woman and became so detached from reality that he found this relationship with the corpse that is Manny. 

I think I will need more time to reflect on this film before I can come to any definitive conclusion, but I thought this was an interesting way to interpret the ending. Personally, I like films that have endings that are open to interpretation. When done right, it can be something that makes you want to see a film over and over again.