(Park Kkot’s Younghwa Garden) Even if the class is overturned, A is exploited, and Eul is parasitic

※ Caution: Contains the main contents of ‘Triangle of Sorrow’.

The man (Harris Dickinson) became angry and annoyed when he paid the price for an expensive date today as well as yesterday. He is a much better model than he is, and his girlfriend (Chalby Dean Crick), who makes a lot of money as an SNS influencer, seems to be thinking of eating him for some reason. He is not something ‘equality’. he feels bad All that remains is to put an end to such an unequal relationship and coolly turn around. however… What is this feeling that somehow makes me more regretful? Trying to break up with a pretty and well-paid girlfriend makes you feel like you’re losing money.

If we limit this to the subtle emotional issue between the opposite sex, we will make the mistake of interpreting director Ruben Östlund’s message only with a brief insight. The Palme d’Or-winning film ‘Triangle of Sorrow’, which will be released in Korea on the 17th, shows the basic property that ‘A and Eul’ exist in all relationships by taking the example of lovers. This is because this property becomes an important premise that leads the story of the movie. The director will now express his guesses about human relationships in a playful way. Even if a cataclysmic event occurs in which A and B are reversed, it is a poignant imagination that the proposition ‘A exploits and Eul parasitises’ will never change.

Imagination begins on a luxury cruise ship. The man accompanies the woman on a cruise thanks to the sponsorship she won. There are already many rich people on board the ship. Although they are of different nationalities, such as an Englishman who made a fortune by selling grenades and a Russian who made a lot of money in the fertilizer business, they all rose to social power through ‘money’. They naturally become the top of the ship’s crew. Even a man who was enamored with his girlfriend enjoys a position where he can pay attention to ‘a male flight attendant who dared to take off his shirt and robbed my woman’s gaze’. The behavior of other top performers is also unusually colorful. He urges a female flight attendant on duty to go into the jacuzzi instead of her, saying, “Let’s switch roles,” and insists on the crew saying that the sails, which don’t even exist on motorized cruise ships, are too dirty.

What’s very interesting is that the director doesn’t look very compassionately at the situation of Eul’s suffering from them. “Always respond like this, yesseol! yes mem! Whether it’s illegal drugs or unicorns you want! (…) And remember. When things go well, what comes on the last day? Hot tip!” The sequence in which a ship crew manager raises his ambitious voice during a meeting directly reveals the human side that he does not want to admit. The slogan that the low-level employees respond by tapping their knees is none other than “Money! money! money!”. The scene where the group cheers at the thought of a thick tip reads like a criticism from the director that Eul is more of a ‘parasitic person’ who is excited about the opportunity to extort A’s money than a good victim.

The highlight of this black comedy takes place after an unexpected shipwreck. This is because a ‘bottle’ that they have never looked at before appears in front of A and Eul on an uninhabited island. It is none other than a middle-aged Asian immigrant (Dolly de Leon) who was in charge of scrubbing decks and cleaning bathrooms while lying flat. Among those who survived, he was the only one who knew how to gather food by swimming in the sea and cook it over a fire! In a situation where only survival is the biggest issue, the hierarchy of Ka-eul is completely overturned. The disease, which has experienced the principle of ‘exploiting A, parasitizing Eul’ more deeply than anyone else, deprives the older white men who show off their wealth and exploits the youngest man’s last name. Having been ill just a few days ago, he repeats the words that those who used to treat him would have liked to write. “I feed them all, but can’t they enjoy these benefits?”

Going back to the beginning, where is the man who didn’t want to break up with his girlfriend who didn’t pay for the meal, and what is he doing? He is a young man who gets food in return for selling himself to a middle-aged Asian immigrant who has become a new power. He even insists that he be declared his official lover in order to secure moral legitimacy. It is at this point that the ‘Triangle of Sorrow’ is truly poignant. Depending on where you stand, of course, a person can instantly become a bad person or a bad person, and at times, he is faithful to his role to the point of hurting his stomach, and severely strengthens the hierarchy. At the end of the play, those who fell on an uninhabited island face a twist with a new incident that was like the shock of a shipwreck. As if to leave it up to the audience’s imagination how the subsequent overthrow of power and the sloppy triangular role play of the people who served in it will play out.