Delayed Reaction: Triangle of Sadness

Premise: A cruise for the societal upper-crust goes very long wrong.

I think I just don’t like director Ruben Ostlund’s brand of satire. I saw Force Majeure and wasn’t that impressed. It’s well-made. I think there’s a canny angle it finds to attack marital troubles. However, to me, it felt like he just kept hitting the same sore spot over and over. Triangle of Sadness is similar in a lot of ways. I think the movie is well done. There are a variety of good and odd performances. He very clearly makes his points. It never reached the point where it broke through as comedy to me though.

This led me to reflect on the nature of comedy. A major brand of comedy I’ve never warmed to is discomfort comedy. I tend to find that it requires more commitment than skill or cleverness. Words like “fearless” are thrown around a lot. In a Borat, it’s the willingness to do crazy things to unwitting participants. In the classic Office episode “The Dinner Party” it’s about how uncomfortable they can make the situation. Ostlund, as I said before, is about repetition of the same punchline. In Force Majeure, it’s very specifically how the wife won’t let go of the fact that the husband fled without the family when he thought an avalanche was coming. Every other scene is relitigating the same argument. The idea being that eventually, the audience will break and enjoy it. Triangle of Sadness keeps hitting on how coddled the rich are. He made the point for me within 10 minutes. The next 140 were about making the same point in new ways.

I really found this movie off-putting. Due to his satirical repetition, the movie felt interminable. Sure, the best part was when they were stranded on the beach in the last act. By then though, I was already fully checked out. It had already spent all my goodwill. And the beach was just an escalation of the same points he made on the boat.

Yes, the sequence with all the puking and shitting was excellently amped up. The constant swaying added tension. It escalated then kept escalating. But I got my laugh out of the way the first time I saw some puke on the window. It failed to find new punchlines beyond that.

I feel like a sourpuss talking about this movie. In theory, I really want to like a movie that’s trying to be clever and sophomoric at the same time. I mean, American Vandal remains one of my favorite shows of the last decade. To me though, Triangle of Sadness felt a lot more like an Adam McKay movie of recent vintage. A social satire that thinks it is smarter than its audience and tries to appeal to people with something crass in order for its clever point to sink in.

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend