It’s been a very long time since I’ve beared witness to a film so definitive and angry in a long time, a piece of its time so extravagant in scale and so grounded in its reality, it makes me hopeful for the future of cinematic satire.
The film in question, a Ruben Östlund 2nd Palme D’or Award winning feature film, “Triangle of Sadness” is one of the greatest if not the greatest film I’ve seen all year — and without a doubt the funniest.
Two plastics, Carl and Yaya (Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean) are famous-for-being-famous ‘influencers’ who take to a luxury yacht accompanied by some of the world’s most powerful people, all equally ridiculous and unlikeable — and they’re about to get what’s coming to them.
What starts as a drama about an annoying young couple, dazed by the fame that fuels their transactional relationship, slowly drifts towards other equally excruciatingly dull tyrants of wealth upon a literal sinking ship, and finishes with probably the best 3rd act of any film I’ve seen this entire year.
This is a comedy, you are supposed to laugh and you will, though there’s no denying how relentlessly aggressive this film is — and realistic for that matter.
To see these bumbling billionaires who know nothing about the real world trying to fight for their lives is a hilarious enough concept that anyone can get behind.. but what this film succeeds in is how gloriously, nauseatingly provocative it is. One of many ‘gross-out’ scenes has sold the film to many moviegoers alone (a 5-minute sequence of the majority of the cast projectile vomiting and defecating due to sea sickness) and that’s just 5 delirious minutes of a rampant, never unentertaining 2 hour film.
This cast is ripped, physically and talent wise: every actor does a phenomenal job at being the worst person on Earth, finding ways to make sad truths about the fashion and trade industry funny through their dialogue, and then basic human defilement and territorial behavior start to surface.
Everyone shines like the golden pieces of fermented sh*t they are and you’ll find yourself giggling at all of their goofy mannerisms and frequent temper tantrums.
The humor is as dignified as it is low-brow, as outrageous as it is subtle. There are infinite layers of irony and prestigious hatred that runs throughout this perfect screenplay only helped further by the fact that the film lets the audience make their own judgements of the characters. I love a film that can challenge, irritate, and put the audience through the same wringer as the main characters.
A film that can overwhelm you with its presentation and experience, and find ways to dig at you long after the film is over. When I left my first viewing of “Triangle of Sadness”, it felt like a rock in my shoe — it kept pestering me and invading my brain with its shock and awe, persistence and deliverance. I couldn’t get it out of my head until I saw it for a 2nd time… and it seriously clicked.
Final Verdict: 9/10
