10. Triangle of Sadness, dir. Ruben Östlund
There have been plenty of movies about a sea vacation gone bad. Titanic, Deep Rising, The Poseidon Adventure, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Titanic 2, etc. There's plenty of grisly watery fates to choose from. Now personally I've always wanted to be the guy who slams into the propeller of the RMS Titanic and does an incredible spin into the deep. That's a way to a fucking die! If I had my choice of least favorite cinematic aquatic ends, I don't want to anything to do with Triangle of Sadness. At least if you're eaten by a tentacle in Deep Rising, it is over fast - and you're feeding an awesome sea monster. Triangle of Sadness' way of killing its cast mostly involves them drowning in as much vomit as seawater. No thanks.
Triangle of Sadness is a nasty slice of class warfare black comedy. Where is a better place to set such a brutal take-down of wealthy and comfortable than on a cruise ship? Cruises are after all the starkest example of social divisions remaining in the modern world. They're practically medieval in design. You have armies of servants, working feverishly, tirelessly for hours below decks, to create this air of effortless luxury and relaxation for their customers. And Triangle of Sadness is not set on some middle class escape. Its people would laugh at you if you said "Royal Caribbean". No, this is the best of the best, a ship for the ultra-wealthy. The workers must satisfy billionaires who have not had a single whim denied in decades.
One woman demands that the ship's sails be cleaned, and even though the ship is not wind-powered, the captain (Woody Harrelson) can only nod, and promise to get on that. One woman forces the entire crew to swim because she's trying to flirt with a pretty steward. When a storm dares defies capitalism and whips the ship in a thousand directions, meal service will not be interrupted. The finery and elegance must continue, on schedule, even if the tossing and turning makes you spit it right back up all over the glimmering plates and spotless tablecloths.
Triangle of Sadness's title is a bit misleading. Things are bleak but rarely sad, it's a comedy until the end. Also I hear "triangle" in the context of the sea, I imagine the Bermuda Triangle and cheesy conspiracy documentaries. It is not clear what ocean this movie is even set in. If anything in Triangle of Sadness is "triangular" it is the three-act structure, all depicting a different angle its world of service and power.
We open on a young couple of models, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Carl (Harris Dickinson), whose diverging career paths already is tearing their relationship apart. Yaya is a successful influencer and fashion model, while Carl's opportunities are closing. Over dinner, Carl has an enormous fit since Yaya does not offer to pay. We watch this extended argument play out over ten minutes as Carl shittily poses his emasculation as psuedo-feminist enlightenment. (Triangle of Sadness's cast will rarely become more honest as time goes by.) These two are the closest thing to the film's leads, but each act will push them either in or out of focus. In Acts 2 and 3, they're just supporting figures.
If you're after subtly, Triangle of Sadness is the wrong movie. If you want a gross-out, however, you came to the right place. The collapse of order on board the cruise halfway through the movie is a spectacular of nastiness. Poor rich women covered in vomit, toilets overflowing, total anarchy taking hold, while maids quietly and professionally turn a filth-covered dining room back to normal, as if nothing had gone. All this effort is completely wasted as much of the cast are in the hallways soaked in fluids, and the ship is doomed anyway. The captain and a Russian oligarch, Dmitri (Zlatko Burić) steal the ship's PA system to have a debate of Marx vs Smith. But do you really need philosophy when the class struggle is so apparent as to be ejaculating itself out of your throat all over the rug?
It all gets even more blunt in the final act, when Triangle of Sadness' greatly-reduced cast finds itself in the mercy of a lowly, previously unnamed maid, Abigail (Dolly De Leon), who is the only person with any survival skills. The same rhythms of power and abuse play out both in and outside of society. In our world, Yaya's body was the main couple's meal ticket. Outside the world, Carl's body gets the spoils. From the high-glamor world of fashion down to a miserable, nasty beach, director Ruben Östlund can only show us the same power structures. In the end, it is all the same form of barbarism, either made to look nice, or unapologetic in its bluntness.
No comments:
Post a Comment