Triangle of Sadness

RK -

I like dark humor. Therefore, despite its appalling runtime, I decided to give Ruben Östlund's 2022 satire Triangle of Sadness a go.

A few observations:

  1. The actors playing the Russian oligarch and his older wife are absolutely terrific.  
  2. This is a movie where you, as the viewer, get to cringe at every single character, and I just loved to cringe at the dysfunctional relationship of the male model and the influencer.
  3. Is it okay to enjoy watching people slide around in vomit and diarrhea?
  4. I fear some people will interpret the movie's message as "when climate change kills the world, the rich will become the poor and the poor will become the rich". In reality, a way better interpretation is "in a society-altering catastrophe, meritocracy prevails". (The one who knew how to fish and make a fire happened to be the cleaning lady, but it could have just as easily been one of the passengers. In today's world, people's merits have evolved beyond mere survival: the oligarch or the male model aren't useless, they just have different kills, skills that are valuable in the modern world, not in an apocalyptic world where survival skills are important to everyone. With today's technology, not everyone needs to know how to fish or make a fire. And if a catastrophe hits, they can learn these skills - or perish.)
  5. I loved the ending - not the cliffhanger part, but the cleaning lady's character arc part.

Anyway, it looks like I'm getting back to watching movies again. (I also re-watched Vanilla Sky the other night. It's so good. I love the message of the power of the subconscious - or, whether you believe you deserve happiness or don't will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.)