Triangle of Sadness | Review

[SPOILERS] Wow. It’s hard to explain the feelings I was experiencing walking out of the theatre. For one, I thought I had been sitting in there for 4 or more hours, completely disoriented as to how much life had passed by in the outside world. I also felt a great surge of adrenaline that stayed with me even as I lay in bed a couple hours later. And together with that, I felt a deep sense of unease that, again, I had trouble shaking. Ruben Östlund is a sort of anti-capitalist provocateur in the film world, using dark comedy and an aesthetic sleight of hand to pulverize the oppressing classes where they sit. Triangle of Sadness is another contribution to this canon. It stars relative newcomers Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean (who passed away very suddenly before the film’s international release, a tragedy that I think contributed to my unease after seeing the film), as a male model named Karl and his higher-paying model girlfriend Yaya. It also stars an astonishingly talented and diverse supporting cast (Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Burić, and Jean-Christophe Folly to name a few) as well as a brief appearance from Woody Harrelson.

The comedy in Triangle of Sadness is its greatest asset. I found myself laughing hysterically and gutterally throughout the entire course of the film. The comedic chemistry between Dean and Dickinson is so natural that it catches you off guard. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous - I think some of my favourite visuals I’ve seen in the past few years. The camera stalks and floats among its subjects, teetering back and forth relentlessly to destabilize our view. The shots also have a grainy, filmic quality to them that harkens back to a more mid-century mode of filmmaking, giving the movie a very nostalgic feel to it. These beautiful visuals make the abject gratuity and grossness of the film come as an even greater shock - a punch in the face even.

The best way to describe the greatest weakness of Triangle of Sadness is that it is gratuitous. For one, the film has a serious pacing issue. The first two sequences - one where Karl auditions for a “grumpy” high fashion show, and one where Karl and Yaya argue about money over dinner, take up a significant amount of time. While they are wonderful, and set up much of what we need to know about who they are as people, these scenes could have easily been condensed or have just occurred on the luxury cruise instead. The cruise itself is an expertly written takedown of the intricacies of class politics in the customer service world - presenting us with an array of eccentric characters whose strangeness grow to mythical proportions by the end of the trip. However, it also features an incredibly drawn out scene where the ship shakes on the water, throttling the inhabitants to the extent that we are forced to watch them projectile vomit for what seems like a full hour. I went into the film knowing there would be a shipwreck, and expected that this scene would at least have a bearing on what was to come. Rather, I was shocked and confused to find out that the ship’s downfall is actually brought about by a gang of pirates. It read as though Östlund wrote much of this in for the audience to have a good cathartic laugh at the humiliation of the wealthy customers, but that’s about all it does for the plot. I did find my mouth lolling open in horror for this entire sequence, so the filmmaking was effective, but it suffered deeply from a lack of editing. 

In fact, much of the film reads as a bit of a gimmick, which ends up feeling quite tedious by the end of its 2 and a half hour run. Triangle of Sadness would be an absolutely perfect film if Östlund wasn’t hammering his message about class into our heads for the duration of the film. If it’s Yaya walking a runway show that flashes hypocritical messages about capitalism behind her; or Harrelson and Burić engaging in an hour long, increasingly incomprehensible debate about socialism; or frankly the entire third act on a desert island where the class dynamics are turned on their head - so much of it was needlessly heavy handed. Östlund would have succeeded much more if he had a pinch more faith in the intelligence of his audience.

But overall, I absolutely loved Triangle of Sadness. As I’ve said before, I love a film that takes bold risks. Triangle of Sadness throws everything as passionately as it can at the wall - and most of it sticks.