Almost three years ago, “Parasite” swept awards season. Bong Joon-ho’s sardonic masterpiece followed the Kim family, a tribe of basement-dwelling con artists who broke into a wealthy house only to end up with blood on their hands. Perhaps as a direct result, we now find ourselves in an awards season rife with eat-the-rich narratives. That could be funny, even revolutionary, if these movies had more to offer than superficial jokes.
Packed with top-tier talent, Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness”, Mark Mylod’s “The Menu” and Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion” are among this year’s For Your Consideration films, with all three films lampooning stridently rich. But while “Parasite” used developed common people as a counterpoint to the heinous elite, today’s movies are more interested in putting on a show of wealth than really developing their working-class heroes.
“Glass Onion” is perhaps the worst offender, if only because it pales drastically in comparison to its predecessor, Johnson’s 2019 hit “Knives Out.” Where “Knives Out” follows an immigrant nurse named Marta (Ana de Armas) as she gets sucked into the homicidal antics of a cartoonishly wealthy family, “Glass Onion” centers on flamboyant detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). Blanc, who helped Marta out of a mess in the first movie, is certainly a delight. This isn’t your average rubber shoe of his: Blanc is an occasionally goofy clothesline who sounds like Foghorn Leghorn.
But he’s no ordinary man: “Glass Onion” features him relaxing in his beautiful terraced apartment, at the end of a Zoom session with Natasha Lyonne, Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury and Kareem Abdul-Jabar. When a third act twist finally throws a commoner into the film’s narrative, it’s too late. We spend most of the movie watching Blanc leer at the upper class, which is a bit like watching a cheetah taunt a herd of leopards.
Though it attempts much more nuance, “Triangle of Sadness” runs into similar pitfalls. The film more closely follows Carl (Harris Dickinson, “Beach Rats”) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean, “Black Lightning”), two model/influencers living in an Instagram-friendly farce. They are together because they make an attractive couple, not because they are truly in love. Unlike their fat shipmates, they don’t seem to have much money of their own, though their looks keep them awash in luxury. They end up on the ill-fated cruise in the movie because a company offered it to them for free.
They project wealth and power to their followers on social media, but they are the most pitiful characters in the movie. Östlund drives this point home without quibbling when, in later scenes, Carl becomes the keeper of Abigail (Dolly de Leon, “Hardcore”), a member of the ship’s cleaning staff whose official title was, apparently, “boss bath”.
Östlund’s decision to humanize Carl (and, to some extent, Yaya) above any other character is as interesting as it is puzzling. Sure, he’s hurt by the looks-obsessed culture he benefits from, too. (The title phrase, “triangle of sadness,” is spoken aloud by a casting agent mocking her lack of Botox.) It is deeply sad that he has nothing to offer anyone beyond his body. But it’s strange to see the movie paint Abigail with the same broad, sociopathic brush that the fashion industry does.
Of course, in the real world, one’s class doesn’t inherently dictate one’s morality, but this is the world of Ruben Östlund, where a Russian fertilizer magnate removes jewelry from the half-naked, vomit- and sewage-covered corpse of his wife. . If Abigail is as conniving as her wealthy lords, it would be nice to at least know why.
“The Menu” is the only one of these three films that sports a working-class lead, but that doesn’t make it any more successful. A group of shady and obscenely rich foodies trot to the private island of renowned Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), where he treats them to a night of molecular gastronomy and murder. Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) ruins his plan as Tyler’s (Nicholas Hoult) unexpected guest. Slowik immediately senses that Margot is an ordinary man, like he used to be, and cryptically tries to find a way out of his revenge plan.
Though we learn Margot’s backstory as the sparse plot unfolds, who she is doesn’t matter as much as what the puppeteer Slowik thinks of her. The attention-grabbing things here don’t come from Margot. “The Menu,” directed by “Succession” director Mark Mylod and co-written by The Onion writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, is entertaining mainly because Slowik is putting on a show for guests he supposedly hates.
It’s more than a little ironic to see such superficial challenges of upper-class exploitation staged over and over again during awards season. As we all prepare to dissect which movie stars were the best dressed or the worst behaved, as critics like me contemplate what to do with another round of studio goodies, it stands to reason that we don’t look too closely at the moguls around us. to which everything revolves. .
In these movies, the excess isn’t so much monstrous as just silly. And if you’re hunting for an Oscar or the Palme d’Or, that toothless shot is less likely to offend your peers.
