It’s fascinating to me that a director as divisive as Ruben Östlund could win two Palme D’Ors in such a short amount of time. His idea of satire – nihilistic and mean, shooting the biggest fish in the smallest barrels – has been derided as obvious and didactic. But his films are also hysterically funny and audacious in a way that’s unlike any other filmmaker working today. His taste (or lack of it), isn’t for everybody, but it is for me. His scathing contempt for the upper class and his fierce dissection of male fragility is complicated by his own self-loathing; he is, after all, a pretty major figure in both of these groups he so viciously devours. The dichotomy of his bravura versus his humility makes his movies (like The Square and Force Majeure) an uncomfortable brew. The villain you seek may be the person you see in the mirror.
Triangle of Sadness is mostly about a young couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean). They are both fashion models, but while Yaya’s star is rapidly rising, Carl’s most lucrative days may be behind him. In a scene early in the film, a photographer tells him to relax his “triangle of sadness”, which is a not so subtle reference to the creases forming between his eyebrows, an unsightly symbol of age in an industry prided on being forever young. The embarrassment of that manifests itself later that night at dinner when he and Yaya argue about who will pick up the check. He claims she offered to pay earlier, she claims he grabbed the bill before she could see it. The argument spirals out of the restaurant, into a taxi, and in their hotel room. She grills him about his obsession with money, he persistently says the money isn’t the point – which, of course, is a lie.
Carl is a quintessential Östlund protagonist: a man living under the paralyzing fear of being emasculated that he does it to himself before anyone else can get to him. The infantile way he argues with Yaya only proves to strengthen her argument: his objections have all to do with appearances and nothing to do with substance. Not that she’s that much of a substantial person herself. Her main gig is as an Instagram influencer, which means every moment must be documented immaculately. Carl is not only devastatingly handsome, but his insecurity makes him perfect to manipulate. He fits the bill as a boyfriend and a lover, but he’s even better as a wage-less photographer, snapping iPhone pics of her that she will trade in for free stuff down the line. The latest free thing? A suite on a luxury super-yacht.
The ship is traveling through an unstated tropical locale and is filled with vacuous members of the super rich and a patrol of starched, dutiful staff members waiting on their beck and call. Paula (Vicki Berlin), the head of staff, stresses to her employees to always say yes, no matter what the passenger demands. Those passengers include a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric), a German bachelor (Henrik Dorsin), and a wheelchair-bound stroke survivor (Iris Berben), who can only speak one phrase, “In Den Wolkan”. This motley crew is being captained by Thomas Smith (Woody Harrelson, a distracting stunt casting choice), a surly alcoholic and self-proclaimed Marxist. When the dangerous mixture of over-appeasing crew and nefarious guests gets rocked by an oncoming storm, jostling the ship violently to and fro, everything quickly descends into chaos.
What follows is the movie’s pièce de résistance: nearly thirty straight minutes of vomit and diarrhea, of passengers and crew alike slaloming along the floor of the ship slicked with sewage. The sequence is a remarkable feat of film direction, not only disgusting in its content but entrancing in its construction. If the imagery alone isn’t enough to make you gag, then Östlund’s camera bobbing from side to side with the passengers might. Nearly the whole thing is soundtracked by an argument between Harrelson’s communist ship captain and Buric’s capitalist businessman, the two trading playful barbs as brown detritus shoots out of every toilet in sight – again, this movie is not an act of subtlety. As hard as it is to watch, I must admit how fully I was captivated, and began to see the logic in its crudeness. What business does clever subtlety have in a film so adamant in its convictions?
As a satirist, Östlund’s takes on masculinity have always been more successful than his takes on class. Perhaps this is because he refuses to imbue anyone or anything with any semblance of nobility. The film’s final act, taking place on a deserted island where a small smattering of the boat’s population has been stranded, is the movie’s biggest practical joke. Forced to fend for themselves, the only person with any survival skills is one of the ships Filipino maids, Abigail (a phenomenal Dolly de Leon). She catches the fish, she builds the fires, she cooks the food. It’s not long until she realizes the power she holds, and she quickly wields it against those who took it for granted when the yacht was still afloat. The sudden shift in power dynamics is meant to unveil an ugly truth about corruption, with Abigail exacting her revenge on the now infantile group.
Asking the audience to sit through an entirely new story arc after the crescendo of puking and shitting is a bold move, especially when the argument being made is as pat as “power corrupts”, but it’s one that pays off, mostly because De Leon’s performance totally reorients what you thought you were watching. If you expect to get satisfaction from Abigail putting these rich people in their place, Östlund and De Leon quickly correct that notion, displaying a level of dictatorial intensity that borders on cruelty. It’s an irony that calls attention to itself, sure, and Triangle of Sadness has no claim to call itself a perfect movie, but it does feel strikingly relevant. That you may feel discomfort with Östlund’s burn-it-all-down thesis is part of the point. “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, yes, but Triangle of Sadness seems to lack even the slightest belief in humanity, no matter the political affiliation. Too glib? Maybe so. But it does make an entertaining movie.
Written and Directed by Ruben Östlund