Triangle of Sadness

This is why I used to go to theaters - to watch thought provoking entertaining movies. While there may be little to no blood - this movie is brutal. No stone is left unturned as you move through society's expectations of class, money and sexual politics. This is not light breezy fun and is sure to turn your stomach just watching it at times. This is a return to an original script not based on some comic book or sequel of some long drawn out franchise. I mean you could watch another DC/Marvel movie but is there a point to that anymore? This is in my humble opinion the best movie of 2022 (so far).

Having adored Ruben's first film and admired his second, I had high hopes for Triangle of Sadness.

Unfortunately, whilst there were some strong moments (mostly in the trailer) and I enjoyed many of the performances, it felt overly long and rather self-satisfied.

Lampooning the lives of the hyper rich, the ugliness, the greed, should come from a place of neutrality and I feel, MUCH more challenging and nuanced than this rather basic farce full of cheap stereotypes.

At no point did I feel that Ruben and the writers felt for a second that they were also part of an elite, as a creation of a privileged bunch of Western European creatives, I'm surprised there's been not much to question this.

Was there any introspection as to the hypocrisy of their position? The cinematic equivalent of a western teenager wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt to their private school.

Not surprisingly the disconnected Cannes audience ate it up. Awarding it, celebrating it and then popping back to their yachts in the harbour to demand cold champagne and hot massages from "the staff".

Pretty much like "The Square", Östlund delivers again so much in between the lines of social criticism, while also not shying away from pretty much on the nose satire in its most vulgar form. While being creative and very anti-consumerism with the message here, this is a movie that might be to "critical" of the high society lifestyle, to reap rewards for the cleverly written satire it really is. It has a clear structure but also many flaws, that won't spoil the enjoyment though.

This movie is unfortunately 40mins to long and has an ending that is not satisfying in my personal opinion, but that's a matter of taste.

P. S. - Don't eat during act 2 and thank me later.

First of all, there is no earthly reason this movie needs to be 2 hours and 27 minutes. None. 147 minutes of beating home with sledgehammer efficiency, the prevalence of socio-economic injustice, the perverse obsession with the superficial over the substantial, and gender inequity. The exposing and mocking of which, I am 100% supportive! But the execution is so lazy and repetitive that, even though the core message is admirable, this can hardly be considered enjoyable, much less enlightening.

Now, I love a slow burn. I like long films. And I definitely like films that have something to say. But in all honesty, this film could have been cut by 1/3rd and spared the audience a lot of pain. Every scene is too long, starting from the very first one. There certainly is a message of gender-reversed exploitation to be made, but how long does it really need to take? And the awkwardness of Carl and Yaya's evening is excruciatingly drawn out, exacerbated by the dull and fractional dialogue (though this could be mitigated by the characters being dull and fractional themselves). Even the aftermath of the Captain's Dinner is gratuitously long and boring (I won't even bring in 'disgusting', because that frankly isn't even the issue.) It must be meant for an audience unfamiliar with subtlety in film, but there's no way that target audience has the attention span for such a drawn out film.

Only the 3rd chapter (which deep down somewhere, I knew *had* to be coming, though I'd hoped credits would role at the end of Chapter 2) was even remotely interesting. Two hours of laborious setup to reveal what we already knew in the first place, and had been very obviously foreshadowed from the first moments on the yacht. Take a bit of The Menu and add some Lord of the Flies, but the total is less than the sum of its parts.

We watched it just a few days after we learned the death of Charlbi Dean, so I expected an awakward experience, but the film pulled me in from the first minutes. It was much lighter and much more fun than I expected - the title is misleading as "sadness" is absolutely not a topic in the film. However, it deals with quite a lot of topics such as richness, power, capitalism/socialism, and so much more... without preaching or suggesting anything. And it is funny and entertaining from start to finish, sometimes even going into satire. A definitely must watch where you don't feel at all that the runtime is over 2 hours. A very European, very international, very likable movie with stellar performances and a very funny but believably absurd story.