‘Triangle of Sadness’ Director Ruben Östlund on Making the Year’s Most Disgusting Class Satire

Midway through the Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s new film Triangle of Sadness, the passengers on a luxury yacht start vomiting. And vomiting. And vomiting. By the time it’s all said and done, we’ll have watched 15 balletic minutes of the .01 percent projectile puking and otherwise sloshing around in bodily fluids.

This disgusting, entirely unsubtle bit of class satire marks a turning point in the movie. The first third explores the relationship between Carl, a male model (Harris Dickinson), and his breadwinner girlfriend, a model and influencer named Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean). Thanks to her influencing, they get invited for a ride on a luxury yacht, where they rub elbows with the highest echelons of society: a Russian fertilizer magnate, elderly British arms dealers, all steered by a ship captain who happens to be a Marxist (a delightful Woody Harrelson). When the boat crashes post-vomiting on a desert island, the hierarchies are quickly flipped. A member of the cleaning crew, Abigail (Dolly De Leon), is the only one with practical skills and becomes the de facto leader of all the survivors.

Östlund, whose amusingly excruciating explorations of human behavior and modern masculinity made us laugh and squirm in Force Majeure and The Square, won his second Palme D’Or this year for Triangle of Sadness. (And once again led the Cannes audience in a collective primal scream.) In advance of the U.S. premiere, he talked to GQ about his weird YouTube inspirations, why male models fascinate him, and what he’d do to survive on a desert island.

GQ: The first thing I need to know is how the disgusting boat scene came together.

Ruben Östlund: It actually started with me making research on a luxury cruise. There was an Italian buffet one night, and the weather was getting kind of rough, so the boat was rocking. People were getting more and more silent in this dining room. There was a moment when you heard someone throw up somewhere in the dining room. And it was so interesting to look at how people reacted to it. People were like, “I have to get out here.” I was, of course ,comparing it with vomiting scenes that have been in film history, and I wanted to go further than anyone had done before.

What were the actual logistics of shooting it?

All the shooting that took place when it came to the vomiting was in the studio, and we had built the dining room on a board so we could rock it. So we spent eight hours a day on a rocking set where part of the film crew had to eat seasick pills because we got seasick. It took almost half a year to edit that scene.

When you write your films, do you start off with the main character or the setting? For instance, in this case were you thinking: “I want to explore what it’s like to be a male model”?

It started a lot with being curious about the fashion industry. When I met my wife eight years ago, I found out she’s a fashion photographer. So she told me a lot about the models. It was written partly during the peak of the #MeToo movement, and I thought it was interesting to look at men that have their currency in beauty. [Ed. note: The film is named for a particularly wrinkle-prone patch of skin between the eyebrows. Nothing that a little Botox won’t fix.] There were some stories about the models my wife told me about, men that came from the working class. And because of their beauty, they could climb in class society. So the starting point was, I want to look at beauty as a currency, and I want to look at it in the fashion world. Then what happens if we take away all hierarchies and we end up on a deserted island?

I understand you also designed a fashion line for fun beforehand.

It was a friend, he has a fashion brand called Velour, and he asked me if I wanted to do something. When I was working with this film I said, “Oh yep, actually, I want to do that.” So I created a brand called Discreet Bourgeoisie, in the spirit of Brunel’s The Discreet Charm Bourgeoisie. With these clothes, you can hide in the upper middle class.

Speaking of camouflaging among the wealthy: you’ve won the Palme D’or twice. Is it amusing to you to screen these films at Cannes while in the midst of the people you’re satirizing?

Yes, of course. I consider that I’m satirizing myself also. Of course luxury is an extreme world. But I think that I always try to find topics where I feel I’m questioning myself and the kind of social group that I’m connected to. I’ve heard someone saying, “You are biting the hand that feeds you.” But why should I not be criticizing my own social group? Why should I treat myself nice? I have to ask myself the question of who I am in this world, and it would be silly if I do it to someone that I feel that I’m not connected to.

Some of the most memorable moments in your movies are those of extreme awkwardness and secondhand embarrassment. Do you run towards those situations in your own life or do they make you uncomfortable?

I feel less and less shame the older I get. I dealt a lot with it when I was younger, and I was very sensitive to social interactions. But I think that we human beings are very sensitive to social interactions. The fear that we have to lose faith in front of each other, the fear that we have that we are going to be excluded from the group and so on, it’s something that is definitely a primal behavior and a primal fear that we have. Because it’s not connected with any physical danger so often, it’s rather the social idea—the fear of having broken the contract. 

I have an example of how absurd we humans are when it comes to that. A couple of years ago there was a ferry catastrophe in South Korea. There was a teacher who abandoned his students when the catastrophe happened, and he managed to survive while a lot of the students died. Survival instinct made him just flee in panic. Later on when he was dealing with this guilt, it was so hard for him to live with that, so he committed suicide. In one moment, survival instinct is pushing away culture, but then in another moment cultural expectations are there, and actually are stronger than survival instinct. I can’t think of any other animal that actually is dealing with culture in such a strong way.

One aspect of those cultural expectations that you explore in Force Majeure, The Square, and Triangle of Sadness is modern masculinity. Why is that a particularly compelling subject for you to continue to return to?

A lot of the situations that I’m dealing with in the film are things that I’ve experienced myself. Paying the bill in the restaurant between a man and a woman—that scenario took place between me and my wife when we met. And I felt like, “Okay. It’s so connected with the expectation of who I am as a man, and I want to impress her at the same time when I meet her.” But then I felt like, “But I want us to be equal because I like her too much and it’s not going to work if I’m going to be the sugar daddy in this relationship.” I’m trying to identify the moments where I have a problem of being a human being.

You began your career shooting ski films. What did that teach you about observing human behavior?

The ski world was a group of young men that were trying to show off and be brave in front of each other. I loved those years when I was shooting skiing because being out in the mountains, there’s a certain kind of risk element always that is present. It can be dangerous, and it makes you completely focused and concentrated and all other thoughts are left behind. You’re not thinking about relationship problems or anything like that when you are out in the mountains.

I know that YouTube is a big part of your process. What are some of the videos you watched to prepare for Triangle of Sadness?

Yes. There are two videos that are fun to talk about. One is Denver the dog. The owner of dogs comes home and he finds out that the dogs have eaten the kitty cat treats. He is walking over to dog number one and he’s like, “Macy, did you do this?” And he’s filming Macy and the dog is looking very normal. “I don’t think you did.” Then he walks over to Denver—and I have never in my life seen shame expressed in a stronger way. I used that YouTube clip, and I showed it to the actors, Harris and Jean-Christophe [Folly], when we were shooting when they had stolen the pretzel sticks.

There’s another clip that I also think is very interesting. It’s scientists looking at how monkeys deal with inequality. There are two monkeys in two different glass cages next to each other, so they can see each other. When they give a little stone to the researchers, they get a reward back. The first monkey gives a stone to the scientist, and it gets a cucumber. Then the second monkey gives the stone to the scientist, and that monkey gets a grape. So the first monkey is looking like, “What is going on here?” He looks at the stone first, then he gives it to the scientist. And once again, he gets a cucumber. And he gets so angry he starts hitting on glass, throwing the cucumber on the researchers. And it’s just a beautiful example that inequality is not only provoking us human beings, animals also get very, very provoked of inequality.

Your mother was a Marxist. Was the Woody Harrelson character an homage to her?

She actually calls herself a communist, and she became left wing during the ‘60s movement. In my home, we have always had loud political discussions. I got to know about Marx from an early age, and I just had an image in my head when I was writing the script that I thought it would be fun if a Marxist captain is reading from the Communist Manifesto through the speaker system, to vomiting guests. I just fell in love with that image. And that’s how I pitched it for Woody Harrelson: “Okay. I wanted to play this Marxist captain, and you are an alcoholic and you get super drunk and you have this prank.” And he’s like, “Yes. yes, I want to do it.”

So when it comes to pure masculine survival instinct, how do you think you’d do on a desert island?

I think that I would try to rely on social skills. I’m quite socially skilled, I would say. I would try to maneuver the group by that ability because I don’t know how to make a fire or fish or anything like that. And I don’t know if Abigail would think I was the hottest guy on the island.

This interview has been edited and condensed.