"Triangle of Sadness" ("Sans filtre"): review

influencer Yaya (L), housekeeper-turned-leader Abigail (C), chief of staff Paula (R)

[WARNING: spoilers.]

Missed my previous Östlund reviews? "Force Majeure," "The Square."

The third and final movie in my Ruben Östlund marathon is the 2022 "Triangle of Sadness." The phrase comes from the world of plastic surgery and refers to the wrinkle between the eyebrows that can deepen over time. In the movie, the phrase is tossed out during an early scene with a bunch of male fashion models; it serves as a metaphor for vanity in all its forms (namely: uselessness, impermanence, and obsession with appearance). The film stars Harris Dickinson as fashion model Carl, Charlbi Dean as model/influencer Yaya (Carl's girlfriend), Dolly de Leon as Filipina housekeeping staffer Abigail, Zlatko Burić as cynical Russian capitalist Dimitry, Iris Berben as stroke victim Therese, Vicki Berlin as straitlaced chief of staff Paula, Henrik Dorsin as lonely and vaguely randy tycoon Jarmo, Jean-Christophe Folly as engine-room crewman Nelson, Amanda Walker as old matriarch Clementine, Oliver Ford Davies as Clementine's weapons-manufacturing husband Winston, Sunnyi Melles as Dimitry's wife Vera, and Woody Harrelson as the ship's socialist captain Thomas Smith.

Carl and Yaya are fashionable twenty-somethings. Yaya, with her massive online income, makes far more money than Carl does, but somehow, Carl ends up paying for their dinners together, creating tension between them. The couple nevertheless ends up on a large luxury yacht that caters to the jet-set crowd—rich, powerful, and privileged people from all over the world. The chief of staff, Paula, is like a happy camp counselor on steroids, cheerfully telling the boat staff that they must cater to every ridiculous whim of their rich guests if they want a fat tip at the end of the voyage. Captain Thomas, a drunk and a socialist, prefers to stay inside his cabin all day, doing nothing, thus leaving most of the work to Paula and Thomas's second-in-command Darius (Arvin Kananian). The yacht goes out to sea, and during a dinner of ridiculously unrelatable food, a storm arrives, causing chaos. As the ship pitches wildly in the rough seas, diners begin to vomit, defecate, and faint. As the ship loses power, Captain Thomas and Dimitry, both drunk, find themselves in the captain's quarters, where Dimitry discovers the microphone for the PA system. Using the PA, Dimitry begins uttering morbid thoughts about the ship sinking, and he and Thomas debate capitalism versus socialism, with Dimitry noting the irony of a Russian capitalist debating with an American socialist.

The following morning, with the storm having passed, the ship is without power and dead in the water. It gets attacked by pirates. Old couple Winston and Clementine are blown up by one of Winston's company's grenades, used by the pirates. The ship sinks, and several passengers find their way to a nearby island.

Some time later, a large, enclosed lifeboat also floats ashore—the kind that can hold over twenty people, and that comes stacked with supplies like water, potato chips, and pretzel sticks. Inside the lifeboat is Abigail, a Filipina member of the ship's housekeeping staff. It soon becomes obvious that Abigail is the only one among the stranded with any survival skills at all: building a fire, fishing, etc., are all up to her as everyone else is pretty much pampered and useless, given to petty arguments about food distribution (and to lying about stealing food). Abigail thus becomes the de facto leader—or "captain," as she puts it—of the group. Although Carl and Yaya are a couple, Abigail allows Carl to sleep inside the lifeboat with her. She gives Carl extra food in exchange for sex, and their strange relationship continues behind closed doors, so to speak, even though all the others know what's really going on, especially Yaya. At one point, the men, who have otherwise submitted to Abigail's leadership, find a wild ass in the jungle and clumsily kill it, providing the group with more meat.

One day, Yaya gets it into her head to go hiking over the local mountain to see what else might be on the island. Abigail goes with her, and the two talk, although they never discuss their relationship with Carl. Yaya pulls ahead of Abigail and discovers something: a metal-doored elevator that indicates the group has been stranded near a resort all this time. This sign of civilization brings Yaya great joy: the group is saved, and Yaya can soon go back to her online influencing. Abigail, by contrast, understands that a return to civilization means a loss of her current power: she was the group's leader because she was the only one with capabilities. Civilization means a return to her subservient role. Yaya wants to step in the elevator and find civilization, but Abigail says she needs to pee first and moves away to do so. Yaya, meanwhile, stares out at the sea while she waits. Abigail quietly finds a large rock with which to bash in Yaya's skull, but as she creeps toward Yaya, the young influencer, without turning around, suddenly offers Abigail the opportunity to become Yaya's personal assistant. Abigail, still holding the rock, hesitates as indecision consumes her. We suddenly cut to Carl, who is running through the jungle in search of the two ladies. And with the film's most suspenseful moment about to happen... roll credits. The end.

The most obvious way to interpret the film is as a satire of the rich and privileged—people who care little for those who serve them. Most of the ship's staff who are directly in contact with the yacht's guests are, for the most part, nameless white girls hoping for their big tip at the end of the journey. (The mostly Filipino housekeeping staff, less privileged, sits below decks.) Interestingly, when the boat is sunk by pirates, and the survivors swim ashore, the only staffer who makes it ashore is Paula, the chief of staff. All the other young girls, it seems, have drowned. Also missing is the ship's captain, Thomas the socialist. I got the impression that Thomas, who matters little to the story's overall plot, is basically a device allowing for an exchange of ideas with Dimitry about capitalism versus communism/socialism. The friendly ideological debate between Thomas and Dimitry is pretty much at the 101 level, often involving little more than slinging famous quotes by Reagan, Thatcher, and Marx at each other. At one point, Thomas does acknowledge the hypocrisy of being socialist while also being the captain of a ritzy yacht for the rich. Because he's drunk, he has a hard time saying that he's "a shit socialist." The words keep on coming out as, "I'm a shit shoshalist." But once the pirates attack, Thomas is out of the picture for the rest of the film.

On the level of dialogue, the film seems to take us through three distinct phases: first is the discourse on gender roles as Carl and Yaya bicker over who ought to be paying for dinner. Second is the capitalism/communism debate, with its talk of the privileged and the underprivileged, and its notions of allocation of resources—a concept that's very relevant to all the shipwrecked survivors. Third, and this is less explicitly discursive, is the theme of power, especially as the film's focus becomes more explicitly on Abigail, the most powerful member of the group thanks to her skills. By the time we're at the end of the film, Abigail is faced with the loss of all her power and a return to her lowly status. Even Yaya's offer to make Abigail her assistant is a reminder of how Abigail is seen back in "the real world."

By contrast, the movie's action interweaves these themes in an excellently show-don't-tell way. The gender-role discussion happens at the beginning, but by the end of the movie, Abigail has "domesticated all the old alpha males," as Yaya admiringly puts it. Not that they were hard to domesticate given that all the "old alpha males" lacked even basic skills. Still, Abigail accepts Yaya's praise as she basks in what she has achieved by becoming the group's leader. The capitalism/communism question pervades the plot as well, given that there are resources to redistribute (like chips and pretzel sticks) but also new resources to exploit (like the wild ass that gets killed, or the many fish that Abigail catches). I didn't get the impression that the film took a definite stance, one way or the other, that was either pro-capitalism or pro-communism/socialism. One thing that became obvious, toward the end, was that Abigail's experience with power had corrupted her: with the finding of civilization, she feared the coming loss of her authority, and although we don't see it, it's very likely that she ended up murdering Yaya. But potential loss of power can't be Abigail's only motivation: Abigail has convinced herself that the life she had led before, in society, was so hellish that she couldn't countenance returning to it.

The movie did indeed contain some by-now-familiar Östlund tropes. Yaya is the Annoying White Woman in this film—vain, sort of bitchy, but also making some valid points. The slow pacing and awkward tension are there, as is Östlund's love of loose ends—something we see at the end as the Yaya-Abigail situation is never resolved before the credits. Östlund's love of biblical names for main characters is also in evidence: the ship's captain is named Thomas, a man who doubts capitalism; and the leader of the survivors is named Abigail, a name referencing the second wife of King David, who provided David with food, made a prophecy, and sensed the movement of history, just as the movie's Abigail senses her authority slipping away from her. One trope the film didn't show was children, although early in the story, we do hear a baby or two crying. (One assumes the babies all drowned when the ship sank.)

I'm also beginning to think that the best audience for Östlund's films is academics, i.e., people who like to tease out and think about things like issues, themes, references, and subtext. People who overthink. Östlund invites analysis of his work, and while the dialogue in his films doesn't explore themes and subtext very deeply, his juxtaposition of these things is what creates the profound alchemy that makes his films both frustrating and fascinating.

"Triangle of Sadness" also struck me as a statement of contempt for the rich and privileged. The film presents us with no truly likable characters: everyone is either a vulture or a victim. What the film explores is what happens when a group of people used to fitting into a certain hierarchy of power and influence suddenly finds itself free of that hierarchy. I know nothing about the life Östlund himself lives, but if he lives simply and humbly (probably impossible after winning a Cannes Jury Prize for "Force Majeure," then two Palmes d'Or in a row for "The Square" and "Triangle of Sadness"), then he is no hypocrite. But if he now lives the rich, jet-setting lifestyle himself, he might be a hypocrite or a self-satirist.

This was also the film—of Östlund's three films—with the greatest amount of broad comedy: the scene during the storm, with all the people vomiting and squirting out diarrhea, with leaking or exploding toilets overflowing with backed-up shit, and with rolling carts barreling through narrow passageways and crashing into bulkheads, was hilarious.

Despite the hilarity, the making of the film has been marked by tragedy: Charlbi Dean, the South African model/actress who played influencer Yaya, died of a very sudden lung infection soon after the film's production and just before its global release. She was only 32 at the time of her death, and she died on August 22 this year.

If I were to sum up what I've learned of director Ruben Östlund and his works, I would say he has an eye for social criticism that is not typically leftist, although there are certain leftist elements that pop up in his work (I see some critics comparing this film to "Parasite," although I'm not sure I completely agree because "Parasite" is explicitly Marxist). Östlund invites his audience to think about issues like power and courage, the ability or inability to tell the truth or do the right thing in stressful situations, the hypocrisy of modern civilization (in which we preach compassion but ignore the poor and marginalized around us), and the vanity of people in all stations of life (those young girls—the ship's staff hoping for that big tip at the end of the trip—all drowned, we can assume, like those aforementioned babies; it's not just the rich who harbor vain hopes). All the same, Östlund doesn't make himself easy to like: his pacing is always slow, and he loves cutting scenes before we can feel any sort of resolution or closure. "Triangle of Sadness" ends right as it's becoming interesting.

I can therefore recommend all of Östlund's films to people who have an academic frame of mind, although even that might not be enough to help you "get" his films. For the less sophisticated crowd, Östlund is a harder sell, and it might be better to avoid him altogether. I like to think I still possess a somewhat academic mindset despite my no longer being immersed in academe, but even for me, Östlund can sometimes be hard to take. Slow, thoughtful films usually require you to be in a certain mood to digest them properly, and if you're not in the proper mood, you're not going to appreciate films like the three I just saw. I'm glad Östlund is winning all of those awards; I hope his fame doesn't get to his head and change the nature of his filmmaking. I appreciate his questioning of authority and values, as well as his explorations of the contradictions inherent in modern society. He's deep; I'll give him that. I just which he could move his stories along at a faster clip.