Ea holiday at sea is always a somewhat ambiguous affair. Either the boat is so small that you can steer it yourself, then you can really enjoy privacy and freedom, but at the price that you can only have a limited number of assistants on board who will pass you the champagne if the sun approaches the horizon. Solo sailing, the most consistent form of this pleasure, goes hand in hand with canned food rather than an exquisite menu.
Anyone who sets sail with their own yacht will have different personnel requirements depending on the size of the vessel, but is only to a limited extent their own master. So far nothing has been reported of mutinies against oligarchs, but one of the problems with wealth is that it creates hierarchies everywhere. If you really want to enjoy a holiday like this, you have to be able to enjoy being surrounded and cared for while pretending to be completely alone.
In Ruben Östlund’s new film “Triangle of Sadness”, a group of better-off people experience a vacation somewhere in between a cruise and a yacht excursion. Another form of nautical movement can also be seen in the background: the Ship of Fools, which has also been cruising through the imaginary since at least the early modern period, always reminding us that on the water it is easy to look stupider than you already are.
upper deck and lower deck
Östlund’s ship is also large enough to give class differences a specific space. What Nestroy reduced to the famous formula of “on the ground floor and first floor” corresponds here more to a labyrinth of corridors and cabins, in which it is always clear who belongs where and what is lower deck or upper deck.
At the center of his group, Östlund places two exquisitely beautiful people. Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean Kriek) are photo models, she may be a bit more successful than him, at least on Instagram. The story begins with a casting where Carl is one of many, and what the film’s title refers to is also discussed: a triangle that forms on the skin of the forehead when it is associated with self-confidence or in which one should be with oneself even in moments of intensified competition, is not one hundred percent correct.
So Carl comes onto the ship with a frown, so to speak. He should or wants to smooth his face there again by lying next to Yaya in the blazing sun and enjoying his wealth (and the privilege of her affection) with her.
When Jean-Luc Godard shot his “Film Socialisme” in 2010, it was not always entirely clear which form of socialism he was aiming for. However, he let the first half play on a cruise ship, which seemed to him like a mixture of floating Las Vegas and a philosophical academy. Ruben Östlund obviously follows Godard, but is much clearer in his ideological premises.
Star role for Woody Harrelson
This becomes clear at the latest when he turns to the central ritual of a luxury voyage on the sea: dinner with the captain. Even in a spacious banquet hall with large tables, there are only limited places where one can directly enjoy the company of the man in uniform. So there is a hierarchy within the expensive exclusivity.
And the captain Thomas Smith also undermines this exclusivity by having a burger brought to him – exclusively for himself. The chichi menu that is served is not for him, strictly speaking the whole ritual is not for him, he had to be taken out of his cabin, in which he had locked himself with strong drinks, under threat of dismissal.
This captain becomes an over-the-top starring role for American star Woody Harrelson, who at the same time once again embodies the logic of privilege and exception that “Triangle of Sadness” is about. Along with a Russian fertilizer tycoon, Smith then unleashes a slew of socialist slogans in a delightfully dialectic exchange of ideological junk from the period since the purported end of history. By this point, the ship is already adrift, and the film is clearly on course for maximum satire.
