Triangle of Sadness

But “Triangle of Sadness,” the new black comedy from the Swedish director Ruben Östlund, might be the one to go the hardest. The movie follows a group of ...

In the third and final part of the movie, after the storm and, later, a pirate attack, a handful of the boat’s passengers, including Yaya and Carl, wash up on the shores of a desert island. [Greed](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/28/gold-rush-2)” (1924)—whose final scene sees the two protagonists battle in the desert for a sack of money even after their water drains into the sand—in Östlund’s film, Rolex and Patek Philippe are suddenly worth nothing against packets of chips and pretzel sticks. In comparison, the political message in “Triangle of Sadness” is like a hammer to the head. A speedboat is sent to retrieve the precious cargo, which is then carried to the kitchen. What Carl calls “this trophy shit” is, of course, related to Yaya’s desire to be a kept woman, but, in the cosmology of the movie, the term can also extend beyond its immediate meaning. He himself, he explains to the couple, is a fertilizer king, who built his empire around the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Yaya tells him that she aspires to be a “trophy wife.” Their relationship, too, is not really about love, she continues; rather, it is “good for business.” That is, it works according to the logic of brand collaboration: two pretty people on an Instagram feed, after all, attract more followers than one. “While you’re swimming in abundance, the rest of the world is drowning in misery,” he rants. And yet, when the two are at a restaurant and the check comes, she expects Carl to pay the bill. We see Carl (Harris Dickinson), who is buff, blond, and handsome, fail to impress the casting agents while auditioning for a modelling gig; one of them asks him to “relax your triangle of sadness”—the furrowed area between his brows, which people often smooth out with Botox. [suggested](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/triangle-of-sadness-reviewed-were-on-a-yacht-and-were-puking) that the movie engages in “political bombast” and “targeted demagogy,” missing the mark of a subtler statement with its easy sloganeering and facile reversals. (It’s probably the most vomit that I’ve seen onscreen since the pie-contest scene in Rob Reiner’s 1986 movie, “Stand by Me.”) The scene is set to a blaring track from the hardcore Swedish band Refused, with the coup de grâce arriving as the toilets on the yacht overflow, sending rivers of runny excrement coursing through the hallways and down the boat’s steps, drenching the passengers.