Cruising for a bruising: “Triangle of Sadness” (2022)

There are times when satire is too on point, too on the nose, and threatens to overwhelm other aspects of a story. “Don’t Look Up” came close to that, but skirted it by couching the satire in farce and going very, very broad. Conversely, Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” is assured, spot on, and with a script that imbues its characters with nuance and even warmth. It remains an unsparing indictment of class, racism, privilege, disconnect, and the reduction to living on the surface that comes with the ascendancy of “influencer culture” and social media in the larger sense.

It begins with what seems as a broadside fired at the fashion industry and reaches peak snark when judges at an audition remark that Carl (an excellent Harris Dickinson) should consider Botox (at twenty-five years old in real life and I assume the same for his character, that is, of course, laughable) and one of the judges asks that he relax his “triangle of sadness” the furrow between the eyebrows.

The first chapter is dedicated to Carl and his girlfriend Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean, who is pitch-perfect in this; it’s a performance that exacerbates the tragedy of her passing this year at thirty-two) a more successful model and social influencer. Carl seems grounded and sensitive to the disparity between the stages of their respective careers. Yaya ignores him at the dinner table, checking her phone, and is either willfully ignoring the check when it is placed between them or is that oblivious. Östlund Is happy to let us traffic in ambiguity regarding motives. Carl, however, wants something more definite from Yaya but doesn’t seem to know how to get at it.

He waits for a bit and then moves to pick up the check but before the waiter returns, he asks Yaya about why she chose to ignore the check. She claims she didn’t see it and does he want her to pay the bill; he says no, and tries to draw her attention to the fact that she invited him to dinner and that she said she would pay this time around. She doesn’t deny it but looks at him blankly and says that this is about money and that because she makes more, she’ll pick up the tab. Carl tries to emphasize that it’s not about the money, but by now the conversation is growing more heated. The waiter comes and Yaya puts a card down that is declined. Carl pays the tab with cash and when the check is returned with change, Yaya takes fifty Euros. By the time they get to the elevator at Yaya’s hotel (Carl is staying in her room), the tiff has escalated to full on argument. Yaya throws the fifty Euros at Carl who continues to aver that it isn’t about the money. The frustration is telling and we already know several things; it isn’t about the money; it is about keeping your word. However, it is about the money because of how it skews power dynamics. It is this latter that is more pivotal to everything that unfolds in the film.

The next morning, Yaya confesses to Carl that she is very manipulative and he notes that now she’s being generous by admitting this. He also, I believe, genuinely cares for her and when she tells him that the only reason to be a model is to become a trophy wife, you sense he means it when he says that he will win her over with love. You also, or I anyway, get the idea that he could do much better for himself; and yet, we do see via Dean’s performance, that Yaya knows that she is charismatic, may be driven by awareness that her career has a shelf life, and maybe she isn’t all surface.

The next chapter is titled “The Yacht”. We come quickly to understand that it is a $250,000,000 craft that caters to the ultra-wealthy. Our introduction to the vessel is a helicopter that lands and deposits a lockbox which is later opened to reveal three jars of Nutella. Normalcy is very far away by now and Östlund is setting up how useless the rich are already, something that will be returned to as a theme and hit a crescendo later.

We see Paula, the staff’s manager stoking enthusiasm for serving the wealthy and the promise of an excellent tip by the end of the voyage. Vicki Berlin brings a Nordic sense of efficiency stoked by Tony Robbins levels of pumping her staff up. Oh, and you never say “no” to a guest. 

It is not long before we meet the wealthy, particularly, a Russian fertilizer merchant (“I sell shit”) named Dmitry (played beautifully by Zlatko Buric who crushed it in Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Pusher” trilogy - among other works; he’s one of those “I know him from somewhere” actors), his wife Vera (Sunnyi Miles), a British couple from the U.K., Winston and Clementine who appear to be your kindly grandparent types but are arms manufacturers (the U.N. Commission to Ban Landmines accounted for a 20% drop in profits, Winston wistfully remarks). There is also Therese who, following a stroke is only able to speak in German (mostly, “Nein! Nein! Nein! In den Wolken!”/No! No! No! In the clouds!”) and her husband. Lastly, is Jarmo, a software developer in high demand for helping companies create apps. 

Carl and Yaya are also on board but not because they are so insanely wealthy. Yaya is enough of an influencer that she has snagged the voyage gratis in exchange for promoting on her social media. The first day, we see Yaya absorbed by her phone while Carly reads “Ulysses” One wonders if this Östlund taking the piss not just out of “influencers” but even, perhaps out of Carl; is he really the type to read Joyce’s opus? We know Carl is very earnest but this little note calls into question a number of things; Yaya may be all appearance and consumed by keeping them up, but how different is Carl in that respect? “Ulysses” is a great work but is it really cruise reading? 

We do get something of an answer when Yaya says hi to an attractive crew member who seems pretty popular (when he says - in Swedish - “Let’s greet the rich!” I couldn’t help but think of a decades older film that works along similar lines - “Eat the Rich”). Carl berates Yaya for speaking to the crew. Any sense of class solidarity - if there were any, at all - is out the window. Yaya points out that Carl is jealous and he walks off and runs into Paula whom he tells about the shirtless, smoking, flirting crew member. She says all of that is against protocol and will be addressed directly. In the meantime, Carl asks to see the ship’s collection of engagement rings and she walks him through the sample; he doesn’t exactly choke when she says how much they are, but you sense that Paula senses a crack in the facade. 

As Carl returns to the deck, he sees the crew member bidding his co-workers farewell, that it was great to work with them and maybe they will work together again someday. It is made quickly obvious that he is being escorted off the yacht to a skiff to return to shore; yes, Carl, he has lost his job. He’s been sacked. This actually does seem to land with Carl, though he says nothing of it to Yaya.

In short order, we see the “never say ‘no’ to a guest” policy in action when a Alicia, a young steward is talking to Vera who - after asking Alicia what her dreams are - insists that Alicia get in the jacuzzi. Alicia tries vainly to deflect the request, but obviously gives in. Before long, Vera is demanding that all the staff and crew go for a swim in the ocean. Needless to say, we cut to bodies sliding down and out into the ocean.

In the meantime, we have met the first mate who has been piloting the yacht, seems to have been left in command by the missing Captain Thomas Smith who has been holed up, extremely hammered, in his cabin. Paula approached him earlier about setting a time for the Captain’s Dinner with the guests (whom we can surmise, he does not care for) and while he insists on Thursday evening. Paula told him any day but Thursday because of an impending storm (hence, his choice). 

There are some grace notes sprinkled throughout; Therese’s husband does dote on her, but you can see where being a full time care giver has not been without cost; Jarmo, the tech millionaire is a genuinely lonely man who asks Yaya and another woman (an “associate” of Dmitry’s?) to take a picture of him for the absent friend who couldn’t make it while Carl and Dmitry look on. Even in the incessant selfie shots that both Yaya and Carl take (they seem to have begun as a couple as two influencers attempting to boost each other’s profiles), there is something like just two kids having fun. And yet, and yet; Östlund is not letting anyone off the hook.

Of course, the tech millionaire is lonely; his wealth and position cannot prevent him from the isolation and removal from a greater sense of community any more than the desire for a similar kind of wealth and position will provide any greater depth or richness to Yaya’s or Carl’s lives. It will not give you a heart to understand the sufferings of others as in the case of Clementine and Winston’s arms manufacturers. Smith’s desire to host the Captain’s Dinner on the night of shitty weather makes so much sense and Woody Harrelson turns in another supporting role of acid-tinged humor as he welcomes each guest into the dining room.

And once the storm hits? Oh, my…. It’s a debacle of so much vomit and writhing, tempest tossed bodies and so well-played that it was frankly impossible for me not to laugh my ass off out loud. I am a terrible person, but I couldn’t help but grin at two things. 

One, I laughed - yes, laughed - at the extremely wealthy buffeted about by the swiftly tilting yacht, some sliding around on the floors of their bathrooms in their own liquids, and at the erupting toilet that spilled out into hall. I was amused at how biblical, almost, the wrath of the seas was. And then, I caught myself; Östlund might have me in mind, too, in my smugness. I had to smirk at myself and wonder if the humor I was seeing didn’t refer to blind spot in my vision. Hm.

As the storm whipped up, Captain Smith and Dmitry repair to the captain’s quarters and grow progressively drunk(er). By the time we get to them, the only two people on board unfazed by the lurching of the craft, they are well-oiled, with Smith challenging Dmitry to guess whether the playing card is black or white. Each time he’s wrong, he has to drink a shot of brandy (one hopes Cognac) and both Harrelson and Buric sell it!) They then turn to dueling quotes; Smith is a dyed in the wool socialist and Dmitry is very much a similarly dyed capitalist. Dmitry hurls quotes from Ronald Reagan while Smith retorts with a wider range of sources from Marx to Twain (is Östlund underscoring that socialists are better read or pull from more sources?)

Eventually, Dmitry gets hold of the Captain’s PA system and first tells all onboard the yacht is capsizing, then walks that back and before long he is joined by Smith and they continue broadcasting their philosophical ballyhoo and bullshit. While all this is going on, passengers have been shitting themselves close to death, many have donned flotation devices, and in general succumbed to panic. Earlier, as guests fled the dining room, Paula is seen handing out ginger candy (good for the tummy, you know). One older gent seemed to be having a heart attack and others were falling over each other to get back to their cabins. 

Prior to the end of the sequence, Smith after excoriating the rich, tells Dmitry that he - Smith, is a shitty socialist; he still has too much abundance. His whole screed was based on how people can have so much while others have so little (or not enough). Harrelson’s line readings are just right; this could have devolved into the maudlin, but it is very much a man looking at himself clearly. This appropriately closes the curtain on the centerpiece of the film.

Essentially, the yacht became Dante’s Inferno. As the seas grew calm, the cleaning crew - led by Abigail (a remarkable Dolly de Leon) - set to work scrubbing, disinfecting and putting the ship to right. As we have seen throughout the film, the crew and staff do actually work. It isn’t exaggerated, but might seem so as set against the leisurely, monied members of that upper wealthy class. The next day brings blue skies and calm weather and pirates.

Yep, pirates. As they near the yacht, they launch a grenade at the feet of Winston and Clementine who picks it up and wonders “is it one of ours?” There is no reply. We see the blast from afar and the billowing smoke that billows forth from near the stern. If the pirates boarded, we don’t know. The boat surely sank, and we know there are survivors because we meet them ashore on an island. Yaya and Carl, Dmitry, Therese, Jarmo, Paula, Abigail (who is elsewhere for the moment), and Nelson, a crew member who worked in the boiler room but who is immediately besieged by Dmitry as a pirate because he’s Black. Paula intervenes, doesn’t speak up for Nelson but browbeats him for calling Dmitry a racist. Eventually, things calm down, and we spy a life boat in the distance. 

Abigail came to shore in the lifeboat and she joins the group after a bit. It also turns out that she is adept at catching and cleaning fish, at starting a fire and cooking. And finally, at asserting herself as captain. As Paula tries to put Abigail in place as a toilet cleaner, that she still works for the cruise line, Abigail responds by asking where the yacht is. Who caught the fish? Who started the fire? It is quickly reinforced how useless these people are and Abigail seizes command, not through force but through who she is. We don’t need an extensive backstory; de Leon simply shows us Abigail’s strength and depth of resources. 

Both Nelson and Carl run afoul of Abigail when they eat a whole container of pretzels that she had been saving and more egregiously, let the fire die, and fell asleep while they were tasked with being on watch. Thus, Abigail withholds that evening’s meal from them. Yaya, sneaks them some food but things take a different direction the following evening when Abigail asks Carl to accompany her to the lifeboat, her abode. Yaya tells Carl to do nothing sexual with Abigail, not even to kiss her; find out what she wants, do enough of what she asks but don’t do anything with her sexually. 

Well, things didn’t quite go that way and it isn’t long before it’s obvious that Carl is Abigail’s boy toy. They don’t indulge in public displays of affection but it isn’t difficult to see that the group knows when Carl goes to enter the boat and sees “Welcome to the Love Boat” graffitied on the side of it in dust and dirt. Carl wipes it away and asks Abigail to consider that they go public with their relationship to ease tension, get it out in the open, and hopefully, clear the air.

Abigail, obviously, has kept her cards close to her vest. She has not trained anyone to do what she does; she maintains power with her knowledge. One exception - and I wish Östlund had explored this a little more - is when Jarmo, Dmitry, Carl, and Nelson, venture into the forest and Jarmo kills a donkey. We are, I suppose to assume, that Abigail skinned, gutted, cleaned, and cooked a whole donkey. That’s a hell of a lot of work for one person to do. By this point, my mind had already drifted to what I felt was inevitable; there were other inhabitants on the island. Wild donkeys do exist, but they are rare and I rather doubt they are found in any abundance on remote tropical islands. For sure, I could come up with alternative explanations, but why it didn’t occur to anyone to scout out other areas of the island speaks more to their blinkered approaches to life and the wider world.

I should also point out that there is a point during which Abigail marshals the women into a bloc, as well. The men are left to watch the fire while the women begin a kind of sub-group. This, too, isn’t quite filled out, but it doesn’t detract from the film so much as raise more questions about gender roles such as had been raised early in the film by Carl and Yaya and their discussion surrounding emasculation because the woman earns more/is worth more (in their chosen field) and of course, Carl’s denial that this is germane. (Hint: it is.)

Additionally, following from that discussion and onto the boat is the repeated assertion that “everyone is equal.” Of course, it is only the rich who voice this. “All are equal” is the wealthy mantra against their full knowledge to the contrary. Vera’s epiphany that “all are equal” and her insistence that all the staff and crew go for a swim is, again “of course”, performative. The rich can buy off their own conscience. 

Poor Vera. Her body washes up and Dmitry holds her in a poignant moment in a film that has saved up for it. Another grace note that Östlund leaves us as a reminder of our shared humanity, perhaps.

The day after the donkey feast, Abigail says she is going to explore the island. She takes Yaya with her and they head out. Therese, who is relegated to an inflatable raft and is sometimes found playing cards with Nelson, is alone in a sequence after Abigail and Yaya set off. A figure in the distance comes forward and it is a beach vendor with armfuls of trinkets. He tries to communicate with Therese but doesn’t seem to realize her predicament and when she tries to express herself more forcefully, misinterprets it as a come-on. By now, the story is rolling onto its inevitable (perhaps) conclusion.

Yaya discovers an elevator in a grotto surrounded by skiffs and rowboats. We can hear dance music pulsing from somewhere and it grows obvious that there is a resort on the island. Before they move onto to find the resort, Abigail suggests they take something to eat and sit for a bit. She excuses herself to go pee and Yaya sits looking out at sea as Abigail finds a huge rock. As she slowly approaches Yaya from behind, Yaya says she would like to help Abigail and hire her as her assistant. The camera closes in on de Leon’s face, a slight string of drool descending from her lip. Cut to black.

We do not know what happened next. Abigail’s desperation of being reduced back to a toilet cleaner, to servant, to being unseen is palpable. It’s what many feel right now in times of extreme economic uncertainty. Yaya, of course, is not the enemy. Indeed, she and Abigail may have more in common than either would be likely to admit. Both are driven by a fear of scarcity and lack, of “not enough” - either economically or likely, as much, because they are women. Their solutions to the issues besetting them as women are different; Abigail through using her resourcefulness, her skills, and innate intelligence is different from Yaya’s using her body as a commodity and social media as something like peacock feathers to add to her bank account and desirability. 

However, Yaya is an obstacle in the immediate. If she makes it to the resort, the group will be rescued and Abigail’s power ends and she returns to a world of subservience. She must have heard Yaya’s offer. Did she drop the rock? Did Yaya find out and flee? Or did Abigail gently put the rock down and join Yaya as her assistant (and who knows what that life would have been like….cleaning toilets might start to look good)? Or did she put the rock down and say, thank you very much but I now know I can carve out my own destiny? Or did she simply bash Yaya’s brains in?

All of these are possibilities and they exist as the various strategies employed for the class, race, and gender divisions that confront the human race right now. Across every society right now, we can see how much the disparity between the very rich and the rest is driving deeper and wider fault lines. Class, race, and gender factor into this because these are the main elements that can be manipulated to keep the wounds fresh among the rest of us. To be sure, all of this is subsumed and manipulated by political forces specific to each nation and region, but the principal elements remain class, race, and gender (and we could grow more granular by discussing women’s health, non-hetero/binary human rights, and so on).

Östlund’s work continues to ripen. “Force Majeure” and “The Square” focus on specific moments in a family vacation or an art museum’s crisis but are about so much more. “Triangle of Sadness” is replete with thematic richness not because it wraps everything up in a nice package but because it doesn’t. Or better yet, the gift is a hard block of coal wrapped in nicely shot, expertly written and directed gift wrap.

Click here for my Oscar Post-Mortem.