Triangle of Sadness (2022)
dir. Ruben Östlund
Rated: R
image: ©2022 Neon
“I sell shit.”
That’s the key line in Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s brutally hilarious black comedy Triangle of Sadness. This is Östlund’s debut English-language film, and it won him a second straight Palme d'Or at Cannes, after 2017’s The Square. For this latest effort, Östlund – who wrote the screenplay, in addition to directing – skewers the super-rich with biting, merciless satire. Within the film’s eat-the-rich ethos, its flavor profile is enhanced with a liberal amount of mockery directed at the pitiless, transactional nature that extreme wealth breeds in every human encounter it infects.
Dimitry, the character who utters the colorful description of his life’s work, is a Russian capitalist who made his fortune by cornering the fertilizer market in his homeland, a country that’s inequality became excruciatingly worse when it traded in the corruption of soviet communism for the corruption of oligarch-controlled capitalism.
As it happens, everyone in this world sells shit. From the Russian fertilizer magnate, to the newly minted millionaire who made his fortune by selling his app-development company, to the sweet elderly British couple who became rich selling weapons of war (mostly grenades and land mines), every guest we meet on the $250 million luxury yacht at the crux of the picture is making the world a worse place.
They do so either by making their fortune in dubious ways or by being so obscenely wealthy that they have insulated themselves from the problems of larger society, to the detriment of everyone below them. In most cases, it’s probably both.
Triangle of Sadness is constructed as a triptych. In the first part, titled Carl and Yaya, we meet the closest thing we have to audience surrogates in this world of ostentatious wealth and privilege. That’s because the couple themselves are only one step beyond being on the outside looking in. Both Carl and Yaya are models – Yaya is also a social media influencer – and their glamourous occupations afford them a lifestyle they could otherwise never afford. (The hot young couple are only on the super yacht because Yaya’s influencer status got her the tickets for free.)
Östlund wastes no time in foregrounding the centrality of commodification and inequality in modern society. In the opening minutes of Triangle of Sadness, we meet Carl as he’s waiting for his turn to audition for a new modeling campaign. A man interviewing all the hopefuls describes to his audience (but, really, to us) the difference between a “happy” brand (read: inexpensive), like H&M, versus a “grumpy” brand (read: luxury), like Balenciaga.
He lines a handful of male models against the wall and plays a game with them wherein they adjust their facial expressions and demeanor based on the interviewer calling out either, “H&M!”, or “Balenciaga!” The more expensive the brand, the interviewer explains to us, the more you get to look down on your consumer. It’s a way of deterring those without the resources to buy the product from feeling like they belong.
Also in that opening sequence, we’re informed that male models make one-third the amount of money as their female counterparts. That sets up a tense confrontation between Carl and Yaya centered on who should be paying for dinner. By the end of the fight/conversation, Yaya admits to Carl that she is with him because it’s good for business. Their relationship is based on driving Instagram followers, supporting the movie’s assertion that every relationship informed by inequality will be transactional by nature. For his part, Carl is hopeful that he and Yaya can be more than simply a good business proposition.
In part two, The Yacht, we meet the people in the social and economic class to which Carl and Yaya both aspire. Here the film shifts into an upstairs/downstairs gear, as we meet a handful of the yacht’s crew and their unending discomfort at the hands of their ultra-wealthy guests. One of the most vivid examples of this discomfort comes in the form of Dimitry’s oblivious wife, who insists that the entire crew go swimming in a pained performative gesture meant to show off how magnanimous she is to those beneath her in social standing.
Another moment like this (my personal favorite) is when a guest insists that the sails on the ship are dirty, and that they should be cleaned as soon as possible. No matter that this yacht is a motorized vessel, as the captain tries to explain to the woman, which therefore means that the ship has no sails. The captain is met with a dumbfounded expression of incomprehension. She saw sails on the ship in the brochure, so that must mean there are sails on this ship. As the one paying the piper, she will hear nothing but her own tune. The captain ensures her that the sails shall be cleaned.
Then the vomiting starts.
Rough seas lead to a gleefully disgusting sequence in which guests are projectile vomiting and toilets explode with rivers of raw sewage, all set to a raucous speed/death metal soundtrack. It’s a nice little nod from Östlund that even the morbidly affluent can’t buy their way out of the nausea and discomfort of seasickness. Their distress acts as a salve for we mere mortals in the audience.
The highlight of this descent into madness is the ongoing drunken philosophical debate – much of which occurs over the ship’s loudspeaker, as the rest of the guests prepare for the ship to go down – between Russian capitalist Dimitry and the ship’s American communist captain. (My own political leanings dictate that I emphasize the captain’s exception to Dimitry’s label. The captain is a Marxist, NOT a communist.)
Östlund’s coup de grâce for the scenes between the two politically focused men comes in the casting of Woody Harrelson as the captain. This is one of those instances where context is key. Anyone watching Harrelson who isn’t familiar with his career or public persona will be missing the sense of unpredictability and low-key anarchy that the director no doubt had in mind when casting the politically outspoken and flamboyant Harrelson as his movie’s vox populi. It makes me wonder how the character will play 50 years in the future, when most people who happen to watch Triangle of Sadness won’t be familiar with Harrelson’s unique personality.
Not that Harrelson doesn’t do a fantastic job with the actual role. He’s only on screen for 20 to 30 minutes (if that) of the film’s 147-minute runtime, but he leaves an indelible stamp on everything surrounding him. It’s easily a career-high for the actor; his acerbic and slightly wild-eyed presence dovetails beautifully with the character.
The ship survives the violent storm, but a handful of guests and crew wash up on a remote island after yet another wild development. (I won’t spoil that plot twist here, but please believe me when I say it wouldn’t matter if I did.)
Carl and Yaya, Dimitry, and a few other guests must now grapple with a situation in which their wealth and status means absolutely nothing. This is where one member of the yacht’s crew gets to shine. Abigail, who head-of-staff Paula callously refers to as head-of-toilets, denigrating her former housekeeping role, gains the power of her rich guests when it becomes clear that she is the only one with the skills to fish and build a fire.
When Abigail takes one piece of fish for herself for each one that she doles out to the dozen-or-so other desperate castaways, Paula tries to uphold the social order that existed on the pre-sunk yacht. Abigail is having none of it. “Who am I?” the diminutive Filipino woman asks each of the survivors. She rewards anyone who answers, “The captain,” with an extra piece of fish.
Even more rich is the way we see Paula – on the first day on the island, she barks orders at Abigail to hand over the few precious bottles of water and bags of chips that Abigail has stashed away in the one lifeboat on shore – adjust her attitude in deference to the new power dynamic. In an earlier sequence, on the yacht, we see Paula telling her crew that no demand from a guest is inappropriate. If they want an illegal substance, it will be provided. The reason for their stellar, no-questions-asked service is simple. With enough subservience, at the end of the cruise, they will surely get what they desire: a very, very generous tip.
Once the social pecking order is turned upside down, and it’s clear to Paula who is in charge, she is more than happy to play toady to the new sheriff in town. When it’s become clear that Carl and a few other guests have selfishly eaten an entire package of pretzel sticks, Paula is ready, willing, and able to suggest retribution to her new ruler. “I think they need to be punished,” whispers Paula in Abigail’s ear.
Another hilarious philosophical flip-flop comes when Dimitry tries to coax the now dominant Abigail into using her skills to provide for all the survivors. Dimitry doesn’t know how to fish, so his new slogan, which he recites to Abigail, is the famous Marx quote, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Who’s the communist now?
Östlund marries impressive set design and filming techniques that wonderfully complement his vicious social satire. The tossing and turning of the ship in the storm – and the guests eventually tossing their cookies as a result – is inventive and visually arresting. I’m not sure if the production used a set on hydraulics to mimic rough tides, but I almost don’t want to find out. I prefer to leave it as a bit of movie magic. I’m also fairly certain that most of the vomit we see spewing out of the morbidly rich characters is CGI, but, again, I’m not sure, which speaks to the film’s attention to detail.
The ensemble cast for Triangle of Sadness is nothing short of magnificent. The look of utter befuddlement on actor Harris Dickinson’s face as Carl in almost every scene is priceless. His performance of blockheaded uncertainty ratchets up when he begins spending nights with Abigail in the one enclosed lifeboat at her behest, to the consternation of Yaya.
The stunningly beautiful Charlbi Dean, who tragically died of bacterial sepsis only weeks before Triangle of Sadness’s wide release, plays Yaya with a mix of vulnerability and (societally imposed) selfishness. Yaya is looking out for number one, but there are moments throughout the picture that made me believe that she and Carl could make it work.
The real standout of the ensemble is Dolly de Leon as Abigail. (Although Croatian actor Zlatko Burić as Russian capitalist Dimitry gives de Leon a run for her money.) If you’ll allow a middle-aged white man a little leeway in using a popular term that he probably shouldn’t: Abigail is a boss-ass bitch, plain and simple. The power she commands with three little words – “Who am I?” – and de Leon’s embodiment of the character are glorious to behold.
Östlund helps by adding cinematographic flourishes, like the exaggerated camera pans he uses to separate people of different classes. The most vivid example of this comes in the juxtaposition of two of these camera pans. The first comes early in the film as Abigail, still a lowly housekeeping employee, tries to enter Yaya and Carl’s suite in order to clean. Much later, that scene is echoed when Yaya is placed in the same position. She’s now on the other side of the suite door, so to speak, when she checks in on Carl and Abigail in their lifeboat boudoir.
The blend of razor-sharp satire, bleakly hilarious dialog, bravura filmmaking, and wicked performances all coalesce to make Triangle of Sadness one of the most provocative and timely films of the last decade. It’s a report on our current society, one that offers a savage assessment of how poorly we’re currently running things.
Why it got 4.5 stars:
- Ruben Östlund is brutally, diabolically clever with his social commentary. I need to immediately see his other films.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The moment when Carl gets pushed out of his seat at a fashion show because more important people turn up is a beautifully crafted moment by Östlund.
- The scrolling statements at that show are gloriously vapid and meaningless: “Everyone is equal now… Act Now… Cynicism is the new optimism…”
- There is no better way to signal that you have a lot of money than by asking someone else, “Why are you so obsessed with money?”
- The Nutella airdrop to the yacht is priceless, as is the sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to it made late in the film.
- One of my favorite lines: “I’m not a fan of fine dining.”
- If you ever hear anyone talk about a love for wealth and possessions, please hold in your mind the shot of Dimitry callously taking the necklace off his dead wife’s neck after the yacht sinks. That moment is sheer brilliance.
- “In Den Wolken!”
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I’ve seen Triangle of Sadness four times now. The first was at Fantastic Fest 2022. It was the closing film of the fest, it ended at almost 11pm, and I had a three-hour drive home ahead of me. After that screening, I thought the movie was good, but my brain was too scrambled to go far beyond that assessment. I watched it again with Rae, then once with a few friends, and I grew to like it more each time I saw it. The last screening allowed me to take proper notes and really wrestle with how I felt about it for a proper review. I’m glad I got to spend the extra time with it, but I’m also sad I don’t have enough time to devote that much attention to each movie I review. Triangle of Sadness was released in the US in October, but you can still find it on select screens due to its Oscar Best Picture nomination. It can also be rented or purchased on most streaming platforms.