Triangle of Sadness
"A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money" - Spoiler-free review of the cruise from hell
I think since the pandemic, there’s been a new sub-genre of drama/comedy media - and I’m not sure what to call it. Channel 5 (the UK tv channel) are famous for making documentaries that focus on the lives of impoverished British people - with titles like ‘Rich House, Poor House’, ‘Slum Britain’ and ‘Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away’. These documentary style reality shows quickly gained the genre title of Poverty Porn. They were primarily focused on people in poverty, most of these people were quite vulnerable, poorly educated and often struggling with finances. These documentaries had a fairly light touch in terms of framing the viewpoint we should take away, but the message was clear, poor people are like a zoo for the wealthier - seeing how the other half lived was flipped on its head, and council estates became a circus of the weird and wonderful. Fast forward to the pandemic, and in the height of lockdown - Gal Gadot had a bright idea of getting her celeb mates to sing a version of John Lennon’s Imagine so we could all join in and know we’re all in this together. Except we aren’t. This blunder was mocked the world over for being tone deaf, offensive and just ridiculous. So it’s no surprise that in recent years we’ve seen a reversal of Poverty Porn, I’ve not seen a title that summarises it, so I’m going to call it Wealth Revenge. Narratives that focus on the obscenely rich and the unfortunate things that happen to these people, and the sheer unadulterated joy that comes with watching obnoxious rich people devoid of ethics and superiority complexes having major downfalls. For clarity, this isn’t aimed at relatively ‘normal’ wealthy people (I’m guessing the definition of this would be those who own their own house, or have a low end 6 figure income), it’s people with ridiculous amounts of money. It’s well documented that despite half the world being furloughed during the pandemic, Jeff Bezos fortunes increased by an obnoxious amount, vast sums of money that would take a thousand lifetimes to spend. Triangle of Sadness is the latest addition to the Wealth Revenge genre, and it’s a treat.
Triangle of Sadness revolves around a very wealthy young couple, Carl and Yaya - the former a male model and the latter a very successful social influencer, being invited on a cruise (all paid for of course on exchange for instagram posts). On the cruise are a menagerie of the elite, an elderly British couple who’ve made their fortune from manufacturing war weapons, a German gent who proudly declares he ‘sells shit’ - or fertiliser for the non-profane version and a lonely British guy who just says that he’s in tech - a nod here to the cryptic world of tech (or read - crypto). Mixed with the uber-rich, are the staff, mostly people of colour - the cleaners, ship hands, maintenance, although notably, all the hosts and hostesses are white young beautiful people, keeping with the pillar of aesthetic mattering the most here. They are all very loosely being led by a completely demented captain, Woody Harrelson (who I’m not convinced had to put too much effort into filling out this role) who is constantly drunk, unbothered and indifferent to the whole thing.
There are instances of a the power dynamics at play here that are wince-inducing, in one particular scene one of the wealthy wives aboard the ship wants the whole crew to enjoy 30 minutes off work to go and swim in the sea. The entire staff of the cruise begrudgingly don their swimwear to entertain the wife, as she gleefully claps and shrills as they slide into the water - just in case you are in any doubt, the staff are there to cater for every whim, they are performing monkeys held to ransom by wealth. This however triggers the root cause of the first of a series of unfortunate event to beset these people - the kitchen staff warn that the seafood they are preparing cannot be delayed, but at the request of the rigid manager of the staff, they go swimming instead. This leads to one of the most chaotic, unhinged (and revolting) scenes I’ve seen in recent years on the screen. Combining bad seafood and severe seasickness caused by a storm leads to almost every rich person on the boat succumbing to vomiting and bouts of uncontrollable diarrhoea. As horrendous as it is to watch, there is a spectacular operatic renaissance painting quality to these scenes. They are graphic, but hilarious, in particular, the wife who insisted on the staff swimming suffers a grim fate sliding across her bathroom floor covered in - whatever she’s covered in, it looked sticky. It’s goes from bad to worse, and all against a soundtrack of the captain’s political and philosophical fuelled drunken ramblings over the tannoy system. There’s no doubt about the message of the film - watching the elite fall apart in such a humiliating way against the Communist manifesto being read over the speakers is so on the nose, there’s no reading between hidden lines here.
Ruben Ostlund’s work (although I’m not familiar with) revolves round the concept of privilege and the constructs in place protecting this, and what happens if the safety net of wealth is removed. In Triangle of Sadness, it’s sort of like if Parasite, Lord of the Flies and White Lotus crashed together and the result is a nuanced look at these covets of wealth society with explosions of unhinged chaos. It’s a demented entertaining film that sort of loses its way a little in the latter third of the narrative, which I don’t know if this is intentional to give our characters an air of helplessness, but it feels a little drab and overly long. It’s definitely not doing anything revolutionary in terms of its message (well, if you’re pretty wealthy, I’m not sure you’ll be joining in with the laughing), but it fully leans into the downfall of the rich and frames excessive wealth as rotten to its core. There is a small twist at the end which lends itself to the overall message that in life or death situations, your money won’t help you. Currency becomes meaningless, skills and abilities are champion in an economy-free existence, which undoubtedly shifts the power dynamic. In a world where the rich just keep getting richer, Triangle of Sadness serves up a stomach churning course designed to give both barrels to the elite.
Triangle of Sadness is worth the watch - even just for the dinner scene - although bring a sick-bag, emetophobes beware.
Triangle of Sadness is streaming on Amazon Prime