SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST
Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund talks to Tymon Smith about the inspiration for his latest movie, which saw some critics walk out at its Cannes screening
Ruben Östlund was born in 1974 and grew up on the island of Styrsö in Sweden. His mother was a schoolteacher with Communist sympathies; his brother would later become a right-wing conservative, so heated political debates were a regular occurrence at dinner time in the Östlund house.
In his early 20s, Östlund worked for a production company where he made ski videos for his friends and took the first steps towards a career in filmmaking. He then enrolled to study film in Gothenburg and made a trio of films after graduation — The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008) and Play (2011). They demonstrated his exploration of the sociological structures of late capitalism and their influence on shaping the psychology of people, often focusing on the ways it brought out their basest instincts.
His breakthrough came in 2014 when he released Force Majeure, a black comedy about a father on a skiing holiday who’s put through the wringer when he runs away in fear from an avalanche, leaving his family to fend for themselves, and then lies about his actions. It won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes Film Festival.
In 2017, Östlund brought The Square — his bitterly funny satire of the pretensions of the art world — to Cannes where it won the Palme D’Or. It also saw him lead the crowd at the ceremony in a collective primal scream during his acceptance speech.
This year he returned to the Croissete at Cannes with his first English-language feature, Triangle of Sadness. A devastatingly absurd, cringe-filled takedown of the worlds of fashion and luxury holidaymaking that features an excruciatingly long set-piece in which the guests on a yacht vomit up their oysters while the captain and an East European fertiliser magnate drunkenly trade quotes from Marxist and pro-capitalist theory over the loudspeaker.
Starring South African model and actress Charlbi Dean (who died in New York at the age of 32 in August), Woody Harrelson and Harris Dickinson, the film earned Östlund a second Palme D’Or, placing him in a select group of double winners that includes Emir Kusturica, Francis Ford Coppola, Ken Loach and Michael Haneke.
The title refers to the skin between the eyebrows that’s prone to wrinkling but easily corrected with Botox. Östlund says the idea for the film came after his second wife, Sina Görcz, a fashion photographer, told him stories of the fashion industry. “I thought it was interesting that many of the models are working class and that they could climb within society using their beauty and their looks.”
Triangle of Sadness is loosely organised into three chapters. The first involves the awkward relationship between model couple Carl (Dickinson) and Yaya (Dean) and climaxes with an absurdist argument about who should pay for dinner. The second is set on a luxury yacht where the couple have been invited for their influencer skills. It’s during this chapter that the infamous vomit scene takes place. The third chapter follows the survivors of the yacht who, after an attack by pirates, find themselves in a Survivor re-enactment in which the boat’s former toilet cleaner Abigail (Dolly de Leon) has become the group’s leader, thanks to her survival skills.
Östlund says he wanted the film to take place in three chapters because he thought it was interesting to turn the pyramid around on the island. “The film is about how we behave because of the possessions we have in a social or a financial structure and our abilities to use them in three different worlds. I wanted to have that journey.”
Though he’s made his name with satirical critiques of the wealthy and the absurdities of social relationships under capitalism, Östlund doesn’t see himself as pigeonholed into the category of righteously indignant, cynical social activist. Rather, he says he’s not interested in portraying someone as nicer than anyone else or meaner than anyone else. “In general, my characters fail. I’m not interested in them succeeding in being good human beings. When people ask me the question, ‘rich people, what do you think about them?’, the only thing I can say is that rich people are nice, they just don’t like to pay taxes.”
As with several previous films, the screening of Triangle at Cannes led to sharply divided reactions, with some critics walking out during the vomit sequence — which took Östlund six months to craft in the editing suite — and others celebrating its takedown of the emptiness at the heart of a social system that’s come under scrutiny and attack in the wake of the pandemic.
Östlund has come to accept this division as par for the course but he’s keen to point out that he worked hard to craft the film with an audience in mind, conducting several test screenings during editing.
His next film, The Entertainment System is Down, will explore what happens when passengers on a long-haul flight are told that the entertainment system is not working and they must resort to living in an analog world for the 15-hour journey.
Finally, Östlund hopes audiences around the world, and in South Africa in particular, will see the film as offering a tribute to the tragically unrealised potential of Dean.
“The character she plays in the film is high status and you shouldn’t mix up her great performance with who she was in real life. She was a caring person. Have that in mind when you watch the film and pay tribute to her performance because you’ll understand how far away the character she played was from how Charlbi was.”