Ruben Östlund really loathes opulence. If one thing is clear from both his last movie The Square and his latest one Triangle of Sadness (apart from an apparent interest in shapes), it is that he loves disrupting high society’s states of elegance. In The Square he threw an overly dedicated performance artist played by Terry Notary into a rich and fashionable banquet to wreak havoc, and in Triangle of Sadness he ups the ante by rocking a luxury yacht, replete with grandiloquence and finery, and quite literally soiling it all. Östlund has a very intense perspective on wealth and class disparity, and it has enough of a wry, unique, stylistic flavour that it’s won him two Palme d’Ors at the Cannes Film Festival -he’s one of only three directors to have achieved this (the others being Francis Ford Coppola and Ken Loach), and the only one to do so for back-to-back movies.
His satirical sensibility is pretty severe, reminding me at times very heavily of Armando Iannucci. The Square was all about the art world, the pretensions of those within it, and what exactly constitutes art in a modern age. Triangle of Sadness is just as much contemporary, if perhaps not so curious, as it skewers class dynamics, image, social and political posturing, against a context that couldn’t be more beautifully absurd.
The film is Östlund’s English-language debut, though like The Square its’ cast of characters is international. Its’ ostensive leads are a pair of models, the English Carl (Harris Dickinson) and the South African Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean), who in their capacity as influencers become guests on a luxury superyacht alongside among others a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Burić), a near-mute German stroke survivor (Iris Berben), a lonely Swedish tech mogul (Henrik Dorsin), and a pair of elderly British weapons manufacturers (Amanda Walker and Oliver Ford Davies). The captain is an ambivalent alcoholic American played by Woody Harrelson.
Östlund has brought upon himself a scenario and cast of characters where the jokes could write themselves. Yet rather than play to some of the more extravagant posh stereotypes, he delights instead in ripping into their clueless sense of modern awareness, their naïve grasp of their own privilege and misunderstanding of mores outside of it –not unlike the style of HBO’s Succession. Here there are war profiteers who carry themselves with attitudes of polite sociability, a wealthy Russian so insecure in her imbalance of class privilege that she forces the entire staff of the cruise to go for a swim, thinking she’s being charitable, to which they only awkwardly consent. There are actually three strata of class divide here: the mega-rich vacationers, the distinctly upper-class serving staff, and the menial workers in the kitchen, laundry, and maintenance departments who remain mostly out of sight of the other two. It’s a real clear Upstairs Downstairs situation among the different castes of employees, from the moment we see the happy-go-lucky assemblage in their pristine white uniforms enthusiastic about the tips they’ll get (not at all the kinds of folks dependent on tips) juxtaposed with the cleaners and cooks slaving away with no room for that down-time or any realistic prospect of sufficient compensation (incidentally these are mostly people of colour).
Scenes like these stand in contrast to those of the elites though, and on some level Östlund is interested in their interiority as much as it reveals the ironic depths of their shallowness. The first act, a prologue, takes place entirely before the cruise and its’ consequences, following a dinner date between Carl and Yaya -or rather the immediate aftermath of one, and an argument over paying the bill that would be right at home in Seinfeld. It intersects with conversation on ego and gender and Carl’s deep discomfort with Yaya making more money and being more famous than him. The function of the sequence is less to establish characters as it is to mock the petty power imbalance that matters only to them and would be more significant later on. Their lives are seen to be exceptionally vain and vapid -following on an opening where male models are run through the ringer and pitted opposite one another by arbitrary judges. It’s here where the title is dropped, the “triangle of sadness” referring to an insensitive term for worry wrinkles on a model’s forehead.
The beauty aspect of this films’ theming never quite coalesces the way Östlund might intend given his choice for the title. The fact of Carl and Yaya being attractive seems to only be one of its’ surface discussion points next to the political and class conversations. And in fact for a time, the movie is far more interested in its’ less conventionally attractive characters, spending much of the critical storm sequence, in which the cruise and its’ denizens are thrown through hell, with Captain Smith and the Russian Dimitry quoting socialist or capitalist thinkers back at each other and debating their ideologies over the ships’ intercom.
That stretch, uproarious and absurd, is Östlund’s most gleeful attack yet on the uber-wealthy, replete with vomiting frenzies and defecation, spilt alcohol and backed-up sewage flooding resplendent hallways and ornamentation, the ship in the waves throwing everyone and everything off-kilter. It is an extravagant tasteless spectacle brimming with venom quite unlike anything I’ve seen, juvenile though astonishing. Östlund commits so much to its’ visceral visual intensity, complimented by rage metal music underscoring the horror. But it’s also indicative of the films’ somewhat narrow scope and messaging. It exacerbates their humiliation but only really for its’ own sake, making a point the audience is doubtless already there for.
By contrast the final act of the piece, set on the island where they ultimately wash ashore has more fascinating things to say. Adrift from their comforts and needing to survive, it is the lowly Filipina housekeeper Abigail (Dolly de Leon) who becomes the de facto leader, as the only one with any of the requisite skills. A little-seen figure before, she becomes a startling voice of authority, and de Leon rises to the occasion exceptionally. There’s a sexual component to her leadership effecting Carl and Yaya as well, playing out an ironic inverse of the earlier insecurity between them while also suggesting a direct link between power and exploitation. Life in this way continues for some time, some tensions breaking down among the survivors while others grow more pronounced, Östlund finding compelling new ways to examine a society in microcosm. The movie ends in an abrupt, ambiguous way that either confirms Östlund’s lingering cynicism, setting in place the old oppressive structures, or maintaining violently a new status quo that in itself is a mirror of those same structures. Either way it’s not ideal, Östlund has little more than pessimism to offer one way or another. At least he offers it with interesting aplomb.
Triangle of Sadness, as I think about it, is lesser than The Square for depth of its’ thesis and satire, although it may be more entertaining. But I can’t deny the wild catharsis of it and the curious avenues it goes down. The performances are good all around, especially from Charlbi Dean, whose sudden death two months ago feels all the more tragic in light of how much as an actress she clearly had to give. Perhaps it is some comfort though that she got to be part of an unforgettable film, as Triangle of Sadness surely is, for whatever else it might be. Ruben Östlund has a unique satiric voice that is intelligent and hard-hitting, which certainly comes through in his latest Cannes victory. Blunt though it may be, it is impassioned, and not a movie to be missed.
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