Power Struggles in Ruben Östlund’s Cinema
As human beings, the intrinsic need to express ourselves and share our own perspectives with the world is universal. Although there are various ways of doing so, perhaps the most powerful tool for communication is through art. Among many forms of artistic expression, cinema holds a great power of statement, with its multi-layered structure. It enables the recipients to further analyze given ideas and contemplate on the meanings through their own knowledge and experiences. In this paper, I aim to focus on three major works of the Swedish director Ruben Östlund, and discuss his recurring themes of power struggles, particularly of social status and gender roles. His works revolve around these themes, however have a complexity to them, giving insights to not only sociological factors, but dealing with behavioral analyses on a large scale by putting his characters in unusual crisis situations, and presenting their reactions without filter.
By discussing Östlund’s three award winning films Force Majeure (2014), The Square (2017), and Triangle of Sadness (2022) we will have a deeper understanding of his observations and contemplate how social norms and power dynamics take place in our lives. His recurring discourse about people struggling with these concepts should urge us to work on unraveling our own struggles in life.
FORCE MAJEURE: Conventional Family Dynamics
Force Majeure, Ruben Östlund’s fourth feature film that earned him Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival (2014), is set in the French Alps and follows a Swedish family on their holiday. The film starts with the family happily posing for the camera in their skiing outfits, portraying an image of the perfect upper-middle class European family. This idea is strengthened with long cutscenes of the family sleeping, brushing their teeth, and skiing together; all hinting at an idea of unity among the members of the family. However after the remarkable scene where there is an avalanche seemingly heading towards them during lunch and the father, Tomas, leaves the table with nothing but his gloves and mobile phone contrary to the heroic behavior his wife Ebba expects from him, this unity is broken. The disaster later turns out to be under control and no one is hurt, but the effects will linger on for a long time, because Tomas chooses to be in denial of his actions and Ebba keeps blaming him for not taking responsibility nor admitting to do so. The perfection of the family is damaged, and the unity among the members is broken.
As a male director, it is not by coincidence that Östlund wishes to emphasize the oppressive expectations on men, keeping in mind he draws from his personal experiences. However, it is clear that these expectations on men are by no means lighter on other genders, nor any social role including parenthood. All his characters are often pretentious and feel trapped trying to preserve their roles perfectly, when in reality they look absurdly funny, like when Tomas keeps denying running away from the avalanche even when there is recorded footage proving he did so. This trapped feeling is also prevalent in the following two films of the trilogy: The Square and Triangle of Sadness.
THE SQUARE: A Black Comedy Mocking the Art World
Despite the efforts of artists and activists, art is becoming an exclusive concept that caters to a certain class of people, and Östlund is aware of this situation. After exploring family dynamics and gender roles with Force Majeure, the Swedish director extends his analysis of modern society in his Palme d’Or winning film The Square. It is important to highlight here that Östlund’s critique is not towards art itself, but to the receivers of art, who are the elite with no limits when it comes to status and power that modern art now holds. Set in a highly prestigious art museum, the film centers around the curator, Christian, a Swedish man from the upper-class. Another pattern we see in Östlund’s character choices rather than male dominance, is that he takes his main characters from privileged groups, and this is also not by coincidence considering he himself is a part of them. The main indicator here however, of why he chooses to mock these people instead of living along with it, is his upbringing by a socialist mother. He tries to emphasize the hypocrisy he witnessed in any way possible with his cinema, and thus extending the main idea of the film to a larger scale, building it around Christian’s private experiences. I will keep the same attitude as the film and start by discussing his critique towards modern art and then slowly turning into other concepts in the film such as lack of trust in the modern world.
The famous scene, which also served as the movie poster, is the dinner party held in the museum for prestigious guests. However during this dinner, events take an unexpected turn after an announcement to the guests informing them that there will be an art performance ahead of their meals. Then a performance artist, a half naked man imitating an ape enters the salon. This man creates an enormous contrast with the guests in the room; all elegantly dressed, practicing dinner etiquettes with such care that it almost feels as if they are in a play of their own. The artist moves around the tables, making his presence felt by everyone in the room as an animal would. Initially the guests seem to be entertained by this man, but he starts getting gradually violent, shattering plates and walking on the well-set tables. The guests are getting uncomfortable, waiting for the performance to be over, but it doesn’t end nor anyone interrupts. The artist starts violating personal spaces, and making guests increasingly uncomfortable up to the point where he violently harasses a woman, attempting to rape her. As disturbing this scene is, the reaction of the guests in the room is even worse. They remain still, not being able to intervene although the artist is evidently causing harm. They are numbed by the privileged position they hold by the fancy chairs they are sitting in. This keeps them from acting out and they are patiently waiting for basically someone else to take action. No one is willing to disrupt the situation and become an outcast. However when one of the guests finally stands up to help the woman, the rest of the group turn into a real herd of animals. They put forward their violent power towards the performance artist, potentially more than what’s necessary to stop him. This also points out how their individuality is assimilated by the group mentality they belong to, preventing them from making their own decisions. This memorable and powerful scene is possibly one of the reasons why the film had a significant impact and won the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. It is worth noting here that Cannes is a prestigious festival attended by only a privileged group of people, which, frankly, makes the situation even more ironic. But is the director aware of this? We don’t know for sure at the moment, but the fact that he celebrated this award might be a hint that he is not aware, or simply doesn’t care about it.
Since cinema is also an art form, we shall watch it accordingly and feel free to criticize, without any boundaries, and regardless of our identities. That is the motto I adopted while watching The Square.
Triangle of Sadness: Power Struggles in the Influencer Age
After gaining world-wide acknowledgment with Force Majeure and The Square, Ruben Östlund had created a high anticipation around his latest film Triangle of Sadness
(2022). Recognised with his unique style of combining humor and visually captivating storytelling to discuss social issues, when he won the Palme d’Or award once again with Triangle of Sadness, this anticipation grew even higher. However, despite the expectations, this time the director failed to please film critics. But it is still an important film to be discussed, divided into three parts; “Carl & Yaya”, “The Yacht”, and “The Island”, and I will analyze them in this order.
The first part introduces Carl, a male model, and explores the challenges he faces within the fashion industry as a man. His girlfriend Yaya, also a model and influencer, achieves more financial success than him. However underlying cracks in their relationship are revealed after she refuses to pay the bill at a restaurant despite promising to do so. After an argument turning into an honest conversation between sides, we learn that neither Yaya nor Carl are inherently wealthy, and they rely on their physical beauty as their asset. Yaya admits to wanting her “man” to provide for her, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to do it for herself with age, because the industry favors young models. This realistic scene provides a unique way of dealing with this issue, and draws parallels to Force Majeure. This successful part of the film ends when Yaya and Carl are gifted a cruise with the filthy rich, as part of an influencer job, and the second part starts.
In the second part of the film there is an obvious depiction of a basic social hierarchy symbolized by the three floors of the yacht. The lower level is where the kitchen and cleaning staff are, most of them being people of color which is most probably a conscious choice of the director. In the middle level, we see staff members who are in direct contact with guests, and remain smiling even when they are under stress, representing the middle class. Finally at the deck, we find the wealthy guests who form the top of the hierarchal triangle. With this visual of the yacht the director highlights the divisions of class within society powerfully. However visually pleasing this portrayal is, the events that take place in the yacht are predictable and fail to introduce new ideas. For instance, when Yaya and Carl are sunbathing on the deck, they encounter a topless worker. Carl gets downstairs to talk with the staff about this, complaining how inappropriate for this man to be working topless “around them”. However, at this exact moment when Carl is talking with the head of the staff, he himself is topless and barefoot with nothing but his swimming trunks on. The scene includes irony as a way of criticism, akin to Östlund’s previous films, but this time lacking depth and originality. Yet, the film takes a good turn and gains momentum with the famous captain’s dinner scene. The captain, played by Woody Harrelson, is a character trapped in between his self-identification as a Marxist and his occupation serving right within a capitalist system. At the captain’s dinner while a storm rages outside, he gets gradually drunk while the guests are getting sea-sick from the storm and the shellfish. As the captain gets progressively drunk in his room, debating with an Italian pro-capitalist guest, the climax of the film occurs, when the guests begin vomiting uncontrollably, and a hand bomb thrown to the ship leads to further chaos and finally the sinking of the yacht; all while the captain is quoting from Karl Marx and Slavoj Žižek.
Following the shipwreck, only several guests, including Yaya and Carl, manage to reach a seemingly deserted island with limited sources. Here, social status becomes meaningless, and power dynamics are inverted. A woman from the cleaning staff, Abigail, is also on the island, and she claims leadership as the only one with the ability to fish or light fire. Here since the conditions have been altered; the hierarchy is reversed, displaying how power dynamics are artificial and thus changeable. Another statement made here is whoever holds the power is prone to exploiting it, bringing the famous quote by Lord Acton to mind:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”(Research Page: Lord Acton Quote Archive, 2023).
This statement gets stronger at the end of the film, when Yaya and Abigail find out that they are not on a deserted island, but in fact a vacation spot, with a luxurious hotel built on it. However, since Abigail is aware of the fact that once the current situation comes to an end, she will lose everything she gained through her authority, and thus plots to murder Yaya, in order to preserve her tyrannous rule. The film doesn’t show whether she actually manages to murder Yaya, or if the other survivors find out about the hotel, leaving the ending oblivious. Howsoever, Östlund manages to express his ideas in this film, and similar to The Square where his main criticism was not towards art itself but to the receivers of art; in Triangle of Sadness, his main criticism is the elitist groups who are determined to preserve this classist and capitalist way of living.
Dostoyevsky writes in his masterpiece White Nights: “…how could you live and not have a story to tell?” This seems to be a driving force for all artists, and resonates with Ruben Östlund as well. Coming from a privileged family, but witnessing the inequality in this world, he chooses to tell his experiences through the lens of his camera for the whole world to see. His films offer a compelling examination of power struggles he faced, in particular gender roles and social status. By combining humor and satire, he managed to create an auteur cinema, shedding light on the complexities of human instincts and modern life. Whether it is the portrayal of stress caused by exposed gender roles, the hypocrisies in the art world, or the absurdity of social hierarchies; by analyzing his three major works, we have witnessed Östlund’s talent for capturing the complexities of prevalent power struggles. These films should provoke us to critically examine our own experiences, and question the struggles we face within the society we are a part of. Change requires effort, and cinema as part of other art forms, has potential for change, serving as a catalyst for self inquiry and action. We shall identify our principles and put forward the individual effort that is necessary for positive change.
