Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, 2022)

Look, no one is more surprised than me. As far as I was concerned, Ruben Östlund was a smug, self-righteous alt-right troll, using irony and pseudo-intellect to "own the libs." In short, the cinematic equivalent of an 8chan troll, someone who took saw himself as the latest arthouse moralist and teller of uncomfortable truths, extending the tradition of folks like Haneke and von Trier but lacking the ethical center of either. Basically, I didn't like the guy.

Triangle of Sadness doesn't really reflect a change in Östlund's m.o. He's still a bit of an asshole. But, I guess I found the subject's of the new film's ire a bit more deserving of criticism? That sounds painfully shallow, as if I don't mind Östlund's cheap shots at easy targets as long as I agree with him. And if we extrapolate that self-indictment, we'd have to conclude that the films of his that really irked me, Play and The Square, were just holding up a mirror to me, an art-damaged aesthete and politically correct virtue signaler.

And maybe that's the case. But I don't think so. I thoroughly enjoyed Triangle of Sadness but never once thought it had anything important to say about class struggle, the modeling industry, haute couture, fine dining, or the vast, floating industrial complex designed to amuse the rich and help them avoid their own self-loathing. I do think Östlund had a hearty private chuckle about the pre-Covid spate of luxury cruises that devolved into norovirus puke-fests. And from there, he thought the whole thing might make for a good "bottle episode" of his ongoing project of Östlundtationalism. Let's watch the beautiful people drown in their own shit! That might be amusing.

And it is. Part of what puts Triangle across is the fact that it spends its first 40 or so minutes introducing us to Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean) and Carl (Harris Dickinson), a pair of au courant runway models, and we come to understand the limits of their language and world. They actually care about one another, despite the fact they are both privileged little narcissists. As the great scene about picking up the check at the restaurant demonstrates, Yaya is a game-player, and Carl thinks he wants to strip it all down to the "truth." They aren't just having a lovers' quarrel. They are sniping at each other for the sheer fun of it, because everything in their lives, especially sex and romance, are negotiations.

This transactionalism becomes a point of contention in the third act, after the ship has sank and its survivors have washed ashore. In a turnabout so pointed as to be absurd, the wealthy passengers are now beholden to Abigail (Dolly de Leon), a chambermaid who is the only one who possesses basic survival skills. Suddenly the social pyramid is inverted, the last becomes the first, etc. And Abigail makes the most of it, ultimately demanding sexual favors from Carl in exchange for food and shelter. 

Earlier in the film, Östlund makes a point to let us know that Yaya makes much more money than Carl, a point of contention between them. So although Yaya is truly jealous that Carl is sleeping with Abigail, she's also deeply frustrated that the power relations within their relationship have flipped. Carl's good looks are now a bargaining chip, whereas Yaya, whose capital is derived from being looked at, has no power at all. 

Triangle of Sadness is a broad farce, one that engages with genuine political issues while mostly laughing up its sleeve. If this current phase of capital is indeed beyond parody, Östlund creates a very literal, painfully blunt allegory, not of class warfare as such but of the unexpected possibility of a Rabelaisian carnival, where all positions of status are at first suspended -- the sinking ship, in which it's every man / woman for themselves -- and then turned upside down, like a capsized vessel. 

Before the ship goes down, we meet the captain (Woody Harrelson), a drunken would-be Marxist who resents the privileges of his passengers. Although he makes a couple of bad decisions that result in the sinking of the ship, his true motives remain unclear. Did he get these one-percenters right where he wanted them, so he could take them down? Or is he just another gig-economy stooge, doing a half-ass job sailing under whatever flag will pay him? As he debates politics with the Russian oligarch (Zlatko Burić) who exuberantly "buys" the boat as it's going down, the captain slurs, "I'm a shit socialist," but it keeps coming out "I'm a shit show..." That of course also describes Triangle of Sadness to a T.  

It's important to remember how the catastrophe started. The oligarch's wife (Sunnyi Melles) is bothered by the fact that her waitress (Alicia Eriksson) will not get into the hot tub with her, even after she has "ordered" her to do so. This results in a complaint to Paula (Vicki Berlin), the crew leader, who then orders every employee on the ship to abandon their posts and go swimming. This is precisely the kind of liberal priviilege Östlund despises, and in this case he's right. It's mandatory fun whose purpose is making the rich woman feel like less of a piece of shit.

The cook mentions to Paula that this all-personnel swim break will mean that dinner is delayed, and that the seafood will have to sit out for awhile before preparation. It's all preposterous, more Monty Python than Buñuel. ("The salmon mousse!") But it presents a problem that the rich too often forget about. If you build a world in which everyone has an assigned place, it's surprisingly easy to throw that world into utter chaos. In late capital, time isn't just money. Time is life or death.