by Adrian D’Ambra
The popular culture fetishisation of wealth and the wealthy has faced some welcome and long-overdue rebuttals in two recent films: Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and Mark Mylod’s The Menu (both 2022). To some extent each of these films relies on a comic iteration of a theatre-of-cruelty, subjecting their rich and (in)famous characters to degrading humiliations, such as rolling them in their own vomit and sewage in the former and the arbitrary amputation of a wedding finger in the latter. But the viewer never loses sight of the broad comedic brush with which these stories are told. Humour both underlines and nourishes the social and political satire so that the image of an elderly woman picking up a live hand grenade or the authoritarian handclaps of an obsessively compulsive celebrity Chef evoke laughter and horror in equal measure. Especially when the Chef refuses to serve bread, the staple food of the poor and oppressed, to his handpicked clutch of wealthy diners.
The social microcosms of these two films are worlds of monsters but within this similarity there also lie significant if subtle differences. In Triangle of Sadness all of the monsters are passengers upon an elite cruise – arms dealers, social media influencers, profiteers and oligarchs spawned by the collapse of state communism in Eastern Europe – in a word or two: capitalist entrepreneurs; one-percenters. Östlund’s depiction of class antagonism is further cemented by the boat’s crew whose responsibilities extend far beyond the essential cleaning, catering and engine maintenance. They must indulge every whim demanded by the passengers. At the beginning of the cruise, the upstairs, white collar crew members are specifically instructed to never say ‘No’ to a passenger’s request. In a brilliant parody of billionaire philanthropy, every crew member, including the invisible cleaners and engine room workers, is forced to swim in the sea because one of the passengers demands that they enjoy the same freedom and pleasure she has thus far taken for granted.
Östlund’s hierarchical demarcation between classes is an essential precondition for his overt intention in the second half of Triangle of Sadness to disrupt and invert the social order. Following a catastrophically mishandled act of post-colonial revenge in the form of piracy, the elite survivors must submit themselves to the control of a new captain on their deserted island. Abigail (Dolly De Leon) is a woman, a foreign worker, a toilet cleaner and the only person on the island who knows how to fish and how to make fire. Her newfound power also entitles her to the privilege of demanding the compliance of the sexual partner of her choice, despite his current relationship status.
Mylod’s handling of class is no less important to The Menu, but the demarcations are a little murkier, a little less dialectic. The reclusive celebrity Chef, Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), would at first appear to be a member of the elite, someone whose esteem amongst the super-wealthy has elevated him to a similar status. Despite his humble and humiliating upbringing as a child migrant whose first kitchen work was flipping burgers, surely he is now on the same side as the diners, one of them, in this ghastly game of conspicuous and gratuitous consumption? But, no. In his attempts to uncover the identity of unexpected dinner guest Margot (the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy), he explains to her that there are two types of people, the givers and the takers. The givers are all of those whose roles in life are to give service to the rich and powerful, including workers of all kinds: servants, staff and sex workers such as Margot. Following the analogy through, the vast majority of human beings (the 99%) survive by prostituting themselves to the wants, needs and demands of the takers who here are represented by embezzler bankers, business people and media tarts. In Chef Slowik’s dichotomy he is no less a wage slave who has prostituted his talent – indeed, his genius – to the tastebuds and wallets of those few who can afford to pay more than a thousand dollars for a meal, than the lowliest apprentice chef or call girl. Slowik’s release of Margot from the death pact he has concocted for his patrons and his culinary acolytes after preparing a perfect cheese burger and chips for her, is an act of solidarity strangely at odds with his act of mass murder, but it is also an act of sincere recognition and self-acknowledgement on his part, recognition of her as an innocent ‘giver’, the paid company and hostage of pathetic food fanatic Tyler (Nicholas Hoult).
The politics of class division and social stratification of consumption are addressed with similar eloquence to Chef Slowik’s earlier giver/taker dichotomy by his leading front-of-house dinner host, Elsa (Hong Chou), who tells one of the gangster-banker-diners: ‘You will eat les than you desire, and more than you deserve.’
Both the Chef in The Menu and the Captain (Woody Harrelson) in Triangle of Sadness are portrayed as monstrous characters with comic overtones. The Captain sequesters himself in his cabin, drinking himself into a stupor, while the Chef orchestrates every course and each turn of events towards the final catastrophe. Both characters are appalled by the people they must pander to and both loathe themselves for their complicity in the corrupt world of crony capitalism. Slowik’s expiation is achieved through his recognition and release of Margot, delivered with true pathos by Ralph Fiennes. The Captain achieves his in the word play, debating points and witty rebuttals exchanged with the shit merchant, Dimitry (Zlatko Buric).
Indeed, it was these intertextual moments in both of these films that I found most enjoyable. Firstly, Chef Slowik’s reverential quotation from Dr Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail: ‘We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.’ Secondly, the hilarious trading not in insults but in quotations between the Captain’s Marx, Lenin and Chomsky and Dimitry’s Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. At last, some laughter as the ship and the shit both go down, laughter at the expense of the captains of industry, the princes of productivity and the purveyors of propaganda who have steered us towards the disasters we are now encountering.
english literature teacher 