Triangle of Sadness is an unexpected choice for inclusion on the list of nominees for Best Motion Picture of the Year. It’s certainly a very accomplished film from the award-winning Swedish director/screenwriter Ruben Ostlund. It’s also a pretty dark comedy with some rather bleak moments, and the audience keeps getting shocked by where the film goes. Overall, it’s quite an indictment of the rich and also a very stinging depiction of how badly we often treat each other. Maybe its inclusion is a sign that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have become more open to considering more unusual films as being award worthy.
The film features what would ordinarily be a typical three-part structure, but here each of the sections is a very distinctly different kind of story. Our focus keeps shifting with the start of each new section, which certainly keeps a viewer on their toes when we have, essentially, three different film genres to connect. “Part 1: Carl & Yaya” features a young couple, both of whom are models. However, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) makes much more money as a female model than her boyfriend Carl (Harris Dickinson) does as a male model. They fight a lot about money and gender roles, and you begin to suspect that the film might be some sort of examination of these issues. They don’t seem to have a very happy relationship – it seems rather toxic, actually – so we could perhaps even expect the film to be an examination of the nature of these kinds of relationships.
However, when “Part 2: The Yacht” begins, we see that the number of characters we’ll need to follow expands. We have the crew of a very expensive private yacht and a range of incredibly rich (and incredibly stupid) people. These rich people are just awful; they have such dumb thoughts in their heads. One of them claims that everyone is equal and, thus, the crew should have a chance to swim just like the wealthy patrons on the yacht do, and the crew has to accommodate their demands, no matter how ridiculous they might be and no matter how much it will interfere with the crew’s ability to do their necessary work. Thus, the preparations for the evening meal gets delayed and the confused crew members slide into the ocean one at a time and then return to their more menial but essential tasks.
It's quite the collection of oddballs on this cruise. There’s a woman who can only speak one sentence in German due to a stroke. There’s a Russian fertilizer salesman who gets into a puzzling debate with the captain over the virtues of capitalism vs. communism. One couple has made their money from selling explosives and weapons used by some of the worst world leaders. And one woman swears that the yacht, which is motorized, has dirty sails despite being assured by the captain and members of the crew that there are no sails. The captain, by the way, is played by Woody Harrelson, whose performance is quite as off kilter as you might expect from him.
The centerpiece of Part 2 is a disastrous Captain’s Dinner. Thanks to some poor choices based on trying to meet the demands of the rich people on board, it occurs in the middle of a violent storm and the food has spoiled because it’s been sitting on hold while the crew was forced into taking a dip in the ocean. You’ve not seen so much vomiting and diarrhea in a film in a while. It’s quite the punishment for the out-of-touch people on this yacht.
“Part 3: The Island” shifts the focus to a survival film. The ship has been destroyed by pirates, and most of the guests and crew have died. Only one person among the survivors seems to know how do anything, and she was the former toilet monitor on the ship – in other words, part of the bathroom cleaning crew. Abigail (played by Dolly De Leon) upends the class system, forcing the wealthy passengers to accept her as “the captain” before they receive any food. She also starts a sexual relationship with Karl in order to grant him food and privileges that he can share with Yaya. De Leon is magisterial in her performance. We may return to focusing on Carl and Yaya a bit more in this third part, but really, we care most about Abigail. De Leon gives what would be an award-worthy performance in any other year.
The ending of Triangle of Sadness is unexpected and rather inconclusive. Given its enigmatic nature, the ending doesn’t especially engender any sympathy for the characters who are still around. I’m not certain what could happen to them next, but I’m also not quite sure that I’d care to know what happens to any of them other than Abigail. Several of the films nominated for Best Motion Picture this year had these rather puzzling conclusions. Maybe that’s a trend for the 2020s to watch out for.
It’s somewhat interesting to note that the sequences on the yacht were filmed on a yacht used by Aristotle and Jackie Onassis. Talk about the wealthy and privileged; that boat must have some wild stories associated with it. It’s also sad that the actress who plays Yaya, Charlbi Dean, passed away before the film received its Academy recognition. I might not like the self-involved character that she plays, but Dean was certainly a talented actress who was still very early in her career.
Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Ruben Ostlund), and Best Original Screenplay
No comments:
Post a Comment