Swedish filmmaker Rubin Ostland believes in the power of provocation. His cinema is all about deploying satire as a tool for sociological exploration, putting human behaviour under the scanner, dredging out the most wretched and depraved characteristics in people and portraying them candidly, in all their explicit sordidness. Call them bitter pills or truth bombs, Ostlund films are nothing if they don’t perturb or unsettle their audience. Triangle of Sadness also treads on the same ground.
A luxury cruise ship becomes the perfect playing field for Ostlund to take a scathing stab at the entrenched class divides in the western world. The film left the house divided when it premiered in May last year at Cannes and won the Palme D’Or. Ever since it has polarized viewers the world over. The most divisive has been the drawn-out, stomach-turning Captain’s dinner sequence. As the storm hits the yacht, almost all of the wealthy, privileged guests get seasick. There’s a deluge of retching and a volcano of filth that explodes both literally and metaphorically. Many have found it an excessive, tawdry, and nauseating device with Ostlund trying too hard to drive home a point.
However, between all that precedes and follows the scene, lies an extremely well-thought-out arrangement, a cinematic design conceived and executed with bluster and audacity. The seeds of materialism that he hits out at get sown in the first part called Carl and Yaya, named after the two protagonists played by Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean respectively. It’s the world of models and influencers, of brands and consumption, of money and the insatiable appetite for it, of the triangle of sadness aka worry wrinkle between the brows that can be easily fixed with botox.
It’s essentially about “cynicism masquerading as optimism”. This “stuffy” world and its inhabitants are then made to congregate with kindred souls in part two, called The Yacht, that is set on the luxury cruise ship. Here, the word of the guests is the command for the crew. The power structure, dynamics, and hierarchies aside, Ostlund builds his script remarkably on banal conversations, all centred on money and the lower depths to which the rich have fallen in their pursuit of it, even trading in grenades and making profits from war. He is biting in showing us a British couple—Clementine and Winston—holding forth on the “hardships”they had to face when the UN regulations came in the way of their “personal exploding device” aka landmine business.
There are absurd complaints and demands—about a crew member not wearing a shirt or the dirty sails being an eyesore. Even their acknowledgement of their own privileged birth and trying to make it less unfair and more equal for the crew is strangely fixated on self-obsession. Letting the crew go out for a swim is more an act of whim than a genuine concern for their rest and relaxation. To borrow a line from Shakespeare’s King Lear, “like flies to wanton boys” are the crew members to the guests, objects of their own games and sports. Captain’s Dinner scene is where their vanities and egos peak and where they are also forced to drown in their own filth. It progresses towards a fitting culmination (also the high point of the film) in the debate on socialism, communism and capitalism between the drunken American communist, Captain Thomas (Woody Harrelson), and the Russian capitalist Dimitry (Zlatko Buric).
As the boat capsizes so do the class divides and hierarchies. Stranded on an island in the third part, the role reversal comes to play with the cleaning woman Abigail now commanding the survivors because, ironically, it’s she alone who has the survival skills to face the worst of storms. However, Ostlund remains cynical than optimistic. About the yawning gap between those “swimming in abundance” and the ones “drowning in misery”, Triangle of Sadness keeps things ambiguous.
What options do the poor truly have in the real world other than being at the mercy of the privileged? Is the island where they can rule a real possibility or just a temporary respite from reality? Can the roles ever be overturned, and divides be bridged? Ostlund leaves us with questions than providing us with any ready answers. Triangle of Sadness has been nominated for the best film, director, and original screenplay categories at the Oscars. Ostlund as recently said in a podcast that he wants his next film to create the “biggest walkout in the history of Cannes”. Amen to that.