The recent spate of “eat the rich” dramedies reaches a new height this weekend with the release of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. With previous films like Force Majeure and The Square, the Swedish filmmaker has built his career on sharp and scathing social commentary with darkly comedic bite. Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, and social media influencers are easy and tempting targets, and in Triangle of Sadness, an unfortunate gathering of such unsavory characters face their doom in a film that is at times frustrating but overall satisfying.
Unfolding in three parts, we first meet Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean). They are a pair of social media influencers/models in the throes of relationship drama caused in large part by the power imbalance between them. He is insecure and needy and she feeds off of his inability to let things go with an aloofness that is maddening and alluring. They are the very picture of Instagram perfection, filtering every potential problem by refusing to talk honestly about anything.
Following a long and increasingly pointless argument, we next see Carl and Yaya boarding a luxury yacht for a spectacularly decadent cruise, one of the perks of having millions of online fans. They meet other passengers, super rich entrepreneurs from around the globe. There’s a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric) who made his fortune selling fertilizer in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The awkward and cagey tech billionaire (Henrik Dorson) and a retired couple (Oliver Ford Davies and Amanda Walker) enriched by supplying munitions for “peacekeeping” purposes. It is the sort of collection of excess and indulgence one might expect in such a place.
Then there is the crew led by Paula (Vicki Berlin), a tow-headed Dane who runs the ship, ensuring the guests are satisfied. The captain (Woody Harrelson) makes her job harder by hiding in his quarters and refusing to emerge. It’s not until he agrees to attend the Captain’s Dinner that we ever catch a glimpse. Harrelson clearly revels in the role. His scenes require little of him but are among the film’s most entertaining.
We spend the second act getting to know these various characters. Their conversations range from banal to insightful, their levels of entitlement on full display. But the first and second chapters are an extraordinarily long and fulfilling setup for the third, when we reach the point. To say too much would be to spoil the experience and the discovery. But through a series of wickedly surprising events, we meet Abigail (Dolly De Leon) the overworked and fed up toilet manager whose survival skills make her the most important member of the party.
At two-and-a-half hours, Östlund reveals his own propensity for self-indulgence and excess. The film’s third act, though a familiar survival story, is where the story really takes shape and reveals who people truly are. But it follows two chapters that, while captivating and entertaining, are too long and tiptoe occasionally into tedium. By the time we near the end, our patience is rewarded, although it is dangerously close to running out. Östlund is not a director who concerns himself with the audience’s attention span or with concise storytelling. The humor is sharp and the satire is spot on, but that could still have been true with twenty fewer minutes of navel-gazing one-percenters.
Still, Triangle of Sadness is a well-crafted, sly and smart commentary on the superficiality of money, power, and class. It is well worth your time and attention.