The other day, I rewatched the award-winning Cannes festival film Triangle of Sadness with my family. This was the second time watching it after initially viewing it with my friend and fellow writer Nawal at the Windsor International Film Festival. I absolutely loved it, but my family hated it, and I genuinely don’t know why. It could be because it is a slow, 2.5-hour film with very dry intellectual humor, contains 18 minutes of vomiting, and has a not-so-satisfying ending, but there are so many reasons that I love it that I needed to share them here today.
*Please note: This article will contain spoilers*
To give you a quick recap, Triangle of Sadness is a satire film split into three acts that showcases the life of the rich, with themes of gender roles and authority interwoven in between. The film mainly centres around two models, Carl & Yaya, who go on an all-expenses paid cruise together and end up in a few unexpected circumstances. They also meet several other characters along the way, including rich cruise passengers Dimitry, Therese, and Jarmo, crew members Abigail and Paula, and The Captain (played by Woody Harrelson).
The first chapter ,“Carl & Yaya”, gives us an introduction of the couple which is a “transactional relationship” mainly because the two are both models. Carl makes less money than Yaya, as male models “typically only make 1/3 of the money female models do.” Their relationship dynamic is introduced when they are out to dinner and the classic gender stereotype of “who should pay the bill?” comes into play. Carl, believing it should be Yaya because she has more money, invited Carl to dinner and said she would pay, while Yaya believed that Carl should pay because he’s a man and she wants to have a partner willing to support her.
The second chapter, “The Yacht”, then brings Carl and Yaya onto the cruise and introduces us to the other crew members. The chapter heavily focuses on the working vs. wealthy class, as we see the working class try to provide the utmost ideal experience for their guests. The yacht is also driven by a drunken Marxist who ends up conversing with a rich communist… which leads to the cruise’s downfall.
In the final chapter, “The Island”, a few of the boat passengers, including Carl and Yaya, end up stranded on an island and don’t know how to fish, create fires, or hunt for food. The only person on the island with these skills is Abigail, the Yacht’s “Toilet Manager”. Because of this, she ends up becoming the leader on the island and initiating a relationship with Carl. This causes a complete shift in authority and begs the question of what would happen to a member of the working class if they come into power.
While this film is a satirical comedy, it’s really thought provoking. I’ve had a different reaction to it every time I’ve seen it, particularly to the ending because it’s left on such a questionable cliffhanger. At the end of the film, Yaya and Abigail discover that the island the group was stranded on is a luxury resort, but before they were to go up, Abigail grabs a rock and lifts it over Yaya’s head, with the director and writer Ruben Östlund making us wonder if Abigail ended up throwing the rock on Yaya killing her, or if she drops the rock and Yaya remains alive. The other part of the cliff-hanger is Carl running through the jungle as fast as he can. Both cliff-hanger endings can be completely left up to the interpretation of the viewer. The first time I watched this, I thought Abigail’s motive for grabbing the rock was to protect her relationship with Carl. Carl and Abigail were hiding their relationship from Yaya, so my assumption was that Abigail wanted to kill Yaya to have Carl all to herself, which then led to Carl running through the forest after hearing Yaya as she was hit. But the second time, I saw it differently. Instead, I saw that by her and Yaya entering the elevator, Abigail would no longer be the leader of the island and re-enter her working class role, so maybe she wanted to kill Yaya so that they could remain “stranded” as well. While Yaya and Abigail are out hiking, a man with knock off purses and watches finds the stranded people on the island, which can imply to everyone else as well that there are other people, so this time around I saw Carl running to tell the girls about the resort on the island. I can guarantee that there are so many other ways you can interpret the final moments of the film, but I feel that as I watch it, it’ll continue to change each time.
I also loved seeing a film that satirizes the roles we play every day and how they can change. I feel that in recent days with film, we have been seeing characters step out of the roles that the leading class confines them to, but how Ruben Östlund did it here was different, mainly because in other films they make it feel normal, whereas in this film, the characters’ roles specifically felt prominent and out of place, making their changes in roles unnatural. For example, with Carl, he made less money than Yaya, was often shown to be vulnerable (which audiences could learn in the first five minutes of the film while watching Carl be judged by the casting agents), and we see him be submissive within his relationship with Abigail on the island rather than dominant. Again, today audiences see this in TV and movies, but something about how it was shown in this film felt more obvious and made you question why they did the things they did. And I LOVED that.
I’ll also finally note that the most notable part of this movie is all the vomiting in the second act, which is overlayed with the captain and Dimitry reading quotes about Marxism, communism, capitalism, and other topics. This is all happening as the rich are literally puking their guts out as Dimitry and the captain are drunkenly explaining how the rich need to pay taxes and are in complete control when they shouldn’t be. I honestly found this to be weirdly powerful while being extremely comedic at the same time. I had never seen anything like this before, and I surely won’t forget it.
So, whether you’re a film fest junkie, just someone interested in class and gender roles, or someone simply looking to watch a thought provoking yet chaotic film, I would highly recommend this film, and after watching it again, I think I can confirm it’s a new favourite for me.