Critique of the wealthiest in ‘Triangle of Sadness’
Triangle of Sadness is a film released in 2022 and directed by Ruben Östlund. When I watched it, I had the feeling at times of not knowing what the heck was the story told.
As you keep watching, though, you realise that it is a deep satire of the wealthy people in general. And you realise it while bursting into tears of laughter.
Triangle of Sadness is an excellent movie. It’s purpose seems to be to critique the rich people on this planet and it does so by bringing them to a very ridicule plane.
The film is divided in three parts. The first one is focused on an heterosexual couple of models, also influencers on the Internet, who make a lot of money out of this. However, the girl makes a bit more money than the guy. Soon he starts having obsessive behavior about that little detail in situations where he feels like he is supposed to pay. Not only he introduces a theme of being over-concerned about money – especially in this case, that he does not lack richness – but the girl also displays how she ends up settling with the situation and saying that he is right. Of course he is not: his claim about the girl being manipulative and worried about social standards of money is not built on true facts, but on his own insecurities about being paid less than her and being less succesful.
These masculine insecurities are also latent in the second part of the film. There is a trip on a yacht, offered to very rich people. That couple are two of the guests and there, the guy shows again obsessive behavior by being very jealous of every man that looks at his girlfriend.
Where the film truly shines is when the rich people start making the staff do things like swimming on the pool in hours of service. Afterwards, in a dinner organised with the communist captain of the ship, the boat starts having some turbulences. The guests, though, do not abandon their positions of ‘being served’, to the extent that they start puking and fainting in the middle of the dinner. Caos rises in the ship while the rich guests settle with the situation and they even believe that the ship is sinking. They are so accostumed to ‘be given things’ at all times. The fact that what is given to them is not a delicious dinner but a catastrophic situation of sea storm does not change the fact that they will not do anything at all to solve it.
That point is made even more visible in the third part.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The ship sinks eventually – by a group of terrorists using weaponry sold by the rich people themselves. A few of the guests end up in an island, and also two members of the staff. The hierarchy is still there until the previous toilet manager shows everyone else that she is the only one capable of cooking and hunting. The guests then realise that their position of ‘being given things’ will not help them survive, and only then the social structure changes and the manager, a woman, becomes the matriarch of the group.
The film is hilarous, sometimes even discusting. It is not a critique to wealthy people per se, as I made clear before, but to pretentious people that are used to have things for granted without having to do anything. And the film does a tremendous job at ridiculising these groups and emphasizing how stupidly settled in a golden throne they can be.