Ruben Ostlund explains the inspiration behind the vomit scene in ‘Triangle of Sadness’
One film that has drawn great praise this year has been Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a black comedy satire that also marks the director’s English-speaking feature film debut. The plot focuses on a group of wealthy people who are invited aboard a luxury yacht captained by a devout Marxist, played by the brilliant Woody Harrelson.
Amongst the yacht’s guests are a male model and his influencer girlfriend, a Russian oligarch and his wife, an elderly British couple who have made a fortune selling weapons, a lonely tech magnate, and a woman who can only speak one sentence of German after suffering a stroke. Naturally, Östlund uses the film to satirise this elite group and their obliviousness to their fortunate position.
One Triangle of Sadness scene, in particular, has gained significant attention from the film’s audiences. About halfway through the film, after being introduced to the characters, they all begin to be sick during a particularly choppy passage. However, this sickness does not reside. It goes on and on and on for 15 whole minutes.
Discussing the inspiration behind the scene, Östlund said: “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.”
Ever the auteur, Östlund kept a keen eye on the proceedings to see how the other members of the cruise would respond. He continued: “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.”
Östlund also noted the lengths he went to in order to portray the vomiting scene accurately. He said: “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.”
Triangle of Sadness is considered one of the year’s best films, and I couldn’t agree more. Östlund poignantly criticises the global elite and delivers a sharp commentary along the way, even if that 15-minute vomiting scene will make you want to do the same.
