“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Percy Bysshe Shelley
As the luxury boat is going down, the drunken captain (Woody Harrelson) reads over the speaker various Marxist and Noam Chomsky ideas: It’s a Scandinavian comedy mashup of Love Boat, Gilligan’s Island, Swept Away, and The White Lotus, only more serious satire, very serious. The privileged and upper-class act poorly both on land and sea. They vomit profusely. It’s filmmaker Ruben Ostlund’s world just as he skewered everyone in The Square and Force Majeure.
Processing for Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness (in the forehead, where wrinkles are made) comes in triptych: a glam couple of two models (hunky Carl, played by Harris Dickinson and influencer Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean), then scenes on the boat and the island. The young couple, gifted with astonishing good looks, can’t communicate without bitter jealousy or plain money envy. Their argument over who picks up the check at a fancy restaurant is right out of Force Majeure. They represent the hopelessness of the privileged, some of whom like them have no money but patronage for their modeling supremacy.
The jaundiced humor escalates to the boat where the social order, from white rich revelers and their staff to below-deck people of color toiling to make things clean and go. The ominous feeling of deserved mutiny is in the air.
On the boat, Ostlund has a captain’s (Woody Harrelson) dinner party that devolves into puking and incoherence; his party in The Square had the same kind of trenchant, absurd satire. An elderly, rich couple, made a fortune in grenades. When one rolls up to them during the typhoon, she exclaims, “Look, Dear, it’s one of ours.” Then, “boom.” For Ostlund, they get what they deserve.
On the island, no one is left unscathed as the young male model is expropriated by the intrepid yacht maid, Abagail (Dolly De Leon), and a much ado about pretzels exposes several to absurdity as they fight for possession. Steerage has overtaken first class on land, and perhaps lamentably, no class is virtuous. Lord of the Flies, anyone?
While winning the palm d’or at Cannes, Triangle of Sadness, like its title, leads to head scratching trying to find a coherent satirical point of view. With three traditional classes acting badly, albeit hilariously, what chance does society ever have to right its sinking ship? If for nothing else, the audience can find the class it admires least and apply the schadenfreude salve.
Triangle of Sadness
Director: Ruben Ostlund (Force Majeure, The Square
Screenplay: Ostlund
Cast: Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers), Charlbi Dean (Black Lightning)
Run Time: 2h 27m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
