Chaos reins supreme on the surface of Triangle of Sadness. But there’s so much lurking not far beneath that deserves consideration. Östlund presents a powerful critique of modern society veiled by black comedy and ridiculous circumstances. Unlike other reviews on the site, for Triangle of Sadness, I wanted to treat this as a thorough consideration of the themes at play within the story, since I know that many may walk always from the film adamant that they witnessed base, darkly comedic chaos for more than two hours.
The film goes to great lengths to show three different depictions of barbarity across its three main parts. The first act is a microcosm of the second and third acts. Models are told to smile and then look grumpy in quick succession, back and forth, again and again. It calls into question the ridiculousness of the suggestion of photographic media’s veracity, that consumers could be made to buy clothing they see on a model based on their facial expressions: One expression suggests a happiness that can only be purchased through the clothes advertised, and the other suggests a level of status that can only be achieved through a purchase. We see through the rapid-fire code switching that both are equally devoid of meaning, and yet there are entire industries fixated on these concepts. It’s barbaric; consumers making a purchase based on meaninglessness, spending their money that they compete so aggressively for in the first place. Also in the first part, Carl and Yaya grapple over who should pay the bill at a restaurant, each presenting a choppy, incoherent string of logic made up of bits of valid argumentation. Carl asserts that it isn’t about the money, but that in a relationship, he would like to feel equal while Yaya notes how Carl ate and drank more than she did. Neither seems to be able to control the complex themes of gender and social norms in their argument.
Spoiler warning for the next two paragraphs. Act two’s barbarism is the most evident. The wealthy yacht passengers force the crew to swim, which causes the food to go bad, which creates an frenzied bonanza of bodily fluids and excess. Caviar, wine, spoiled food, and rough waves lead to flooded sewage, sea sickness, and vomit spew around the yacht, while the captain (Woody Harrelson) and a wealthy “shit salesman” (fertilizer) are equally (and metaphorically) regurgitant, using the internet to look up famous maxims of capitalists and communists. The two delude themselves into thinking that regurgitating the quotes of famous dead men representing social ideologies is an intelligent tête-à-tête, when in reality they have about as much control over these words as they do over the boat, which is to say none whatsoever. In this sense we can see a tremendous disconnect between the people who live today in these modern social structures and the ideas that put these structures into place; people are simply living, capitalizing, and consuming without any real critical thought.
The film’s final chapter depicts the barbaric society of a small group marooned on an apparently deserted island, where their social roles and societal worth are completely flipped on their heads. The worth of the members of the group is then determined by what they can provide for that small society, whether through their survival skills or sexuality. People are still using other people to capitalize and thrive, and the only difference is that in this last act, this user and used relationship is just more connected to base humanistic pragmatism: survival of the fittest—or of the sexiest (another connection between the first and third parts of the film).
Each of the film’s parts tell the same story of barbarism, even if social roles may fluctuate from one act to another. No one seems to have any real degree of control over the complex themes they grapple with: gender, class, social structures, and survivalism. The film is chaotic for sure, but there is undeniably a method to this madness. The film’s final act is no more or less barbaric than the first or second acts, despite how it may initially appear. Each act plays with the ridiculousness of human nature in how it constantly seeks to capitalize on others. In order to capitalize in a capitalistic society, a person must in some way or another capitalize on other people, whether they are a model or photographer taking pictures to convince others to buy something with meaningless techniques—or a couple of elderly arms manufacturers who sell hand grenades so that soldiers can use them on one another. Pirates capitalize on the people they kill and steal from, and people getting served at restaurants capitalize on the labor the service industry provides, while the servers also seek to capitalize on the wealth of those they serve.
It may be the case that the only sensible way to organize a society is through love of one another. The decisions we make that stem from love are the most worthy and commendable ones. Triangle of Sadness depicts a complete absence of love in favor of greed and lust. Its unhinged members of society are disconnected from the ideologies that brought them to where they are, and Östlund therefore presents a view of capitalism as equally barbaric as socialism and communism; in this society, no one makes any decisions based on love, and so it all falls into chaos. All decisions are for the purpose of capitalizing and thriving at the expense of another person.
In Frame 