triangle of sadness

Triangle of Sadness Will Rightfully Be Comedy’s Representative This Awards Season

For the majority of comedy on the big, small, and phone screen, the prospect of some type of major award that isn’t specifically delineated between comedy or drama seems a horizon too far to reach. Thus, a divide between indie art house fair that self identifies as comedy or the genre blend of dramedy and pretty much everything else comedic has existed for several years and seemingly will continue to persist. The Favourite, In The Loop, and Grand Budapest Hotel are the sort of fare that The Oscars actually take seriously as opposed to the movie version of What We Do In The Shadows.

There’s no easy solution to solve that problem as distribution deals and marketing often are the true fates in charge of the entertainment industry. However, Triangle of Sadness, the latest work from a true modern day comedy auteur Ruben Östlund, is a hysterical, searing takedown of the privilege of wealth and beauty, almost picking up from the season finale of The White Lotus and then going to the nth degree + 1 with its chaos.

Östlund’s pedigree precedes him with critically acclaimed works of Force Majeure and The Square winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes a few years ago. Masculinity and the pretension of the art world were respectively his targets then, but he savagely goes in, almost with no remorse, on the lifestyles of the rich and famous with such stinging precision here and never lets up. There is an almost ballet-like quality to the pandemonium of Captain’s Dinner scene, a screenshot of which is used in the thumbnail for the trailer below.

The characters that includes a loveless professional model couple, an über awkward techie, and a bumbling fertilizer magnate are all so deeply, inherently flawed by their station in their life and Ruben fully fleshes that out in a way that is even more hysterically infuriating. There’s no need for super clever, pitter-patter style dialogue when the organic things that these one-percenters would say are so comically absurd to the rest of the world as is (ex. humbly admitting you make money from making the world’s grenades). It’s almost the same formula as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where all the principal characters are terrible in their own unique way and the joy comes from watching them all repeatedly fail. Triangle of Sadness just takes that formula and adds brilliant cinematic sheen and direction and a bit more gravitas.

Triangle of Sadness may not go for a laugh count per scene, but the laughs are pretty damn big when they come around and leave an indelible mark that will have you replaying them in your head well after you leave the theater (or when you close your laptop after streaming it). Again, it doesn’t solve that aforementioned divide, but comedy-at-large should be proud that Östlund is carrying its flag.

This latest work from Ruben Östlund cements his legacy that will be more than deserving of honorary awards and film retrospectives (and limited edition box sets if that’s still a thing we’re all doing in the next few years). Triangle of Sadness is in theaters near you.

Also, massive points to the very clever bit of merch that I will hopefully never have to use.