This 2022 Arthouse Movie Was Basically Gilligan’s Island

Ruben Östlund’s 2022 film “Triangle of Sadness” was an unlikely Oscar darling, earning nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It didn’t win, but it was odd to see the Academy Awards recognize a movie with an extended ship-wide vomit sequence. The premise of “Triangle of Sadness” was simple and wicked. A group of wealthy know-nothings — including Instagram influencers, Russian oligarchs, and other ancillary money-hoarders — gathered on a luxury yacht for an anything-goes-type pleasure cruise. The ship’s staff have shifted into “the customer is always right” mode, and have to entertain each of the oligarch’s weird whims (Swim party! Whee!), even if it interrupts the natural flow of the ship’s operations. 

The weather starts getting rough. The yacht lurches through the ocean waves. During a fancy dinner party, all the guests become queasy. Despite the courage of the fearless crew, the cookies all were tossed. “Triangle of Sadness” features a good 15 to 20 minutes of rich people barfing all over themselves as their toilets back up and flood everything with feces. It was one of the funniest scenes of its year. 

The ship sets ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle. The wealthy survivors have no survival skills whatsoever, and begin fighting over bags of pretzels they salvaged from the wreckage. The only person with any survival skills is Abigail (Dolly de Leon), and her ability to start a fire and catch a fish essentially puts her in charge. In exchange for her services, she claims the most comfortable sleeping arrangement, and coerces the empty-headed hunk Carl (Harris Dickinson) into performing sexual favors. 

Imagine if the bulk of the characters in “Triangle of Sadness” are Mr. and Mrs. Howell, and that Abigail is Mary Ann, and you have an identical premise as Sherwood Schwartz’s 1964 sitcom “Gilligan’s Island.” Only more bleak and wicked. 

Sherwood Schwartz went on record as saying that “Gilligan’s Island,” while a broad and silly sitcom, might represent an idealized version of American democracy. In Schwartz’s vision, seven characters from disparate classes — a microcosm of America — were lost on a desert island together, and managed to survive swimmingly. A wealthy couple, an actress, a farmworker, a member of the intelligentsia, and two military-like laborers all came together to live in relative comfort. To Schwartz’s eyes, “Gilligan’s Island” was ultimately very optimistic. 

There is an interesting undercurrent of class criticism in “Gilligan’s Island” as a result of this optimism. Mr. Howell (Jim Backus), most notably, finds that his wealth is useless in a survival scenario. He and his wife Lovey (Natalie Schafer) have crates and crates of valuable things, and they continue to act as if their wealth has meaning. But the characters are, in actuality, comedic oafs. They are oafs for the very reason that their “nice things” are useless on a deserted island. On a desert island, all wealth is meaningless. The wealthy are useless. 

Ruben Östlund shares none of Schwartz’s optimism in “Triangle of Sadness,” and keys more deeply into the subtle class criticism present in the American TV classic. In Östlund’s vision, various classes of humanity will crash-land on a desert island, but it will be mostly because the rich are so brazenly incompetent. Then, once there, only the laborers will have power. 

“Triangle of Sadness” is basically “Gilligan’s Island” if Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) were revealed to be the Island’s only power player, and Gilligan (Bob Denver) were a dumb bohunk she enlisted as a concubine. 

If Abigail is a more resolute and sexual version of Mary Ann, and Carl is Gilligan, then we can continue extrapolating character parallels between “Triangle of Sadness” and “Gilligan’s Island.” Ginger (Tina Louise) has clearly been transformed into the dumb-bunny influencer Yaya (Charlbi Dean). The Skipper (Alan Hale) has become the uncaring captain (Woody Harrelson), now a weed-enthusiast communist who loves to have empty, unproductive political discussions with the Russian oligarch Dmitry (Zlatko Burić). Dmitry could be said to be Mr. Howell, but really the entire “Triangle of Sadness” yacht is populated entirely by Mr. and Mrs. Howells. 

Perhaps telling, there is no Professor (Russell Johnson) in the world of “Triangle of Sadness.” On “Gilligan’s Island,” the Professor was the most competent and accomplished character, often using his engineering skills to repair radios and tinker with machines that washed up on shore. He was an intellect who loved sharing his knowledge. In “Triangle of Sadness,” there is no enthusiasm for knowledge, no skill, no one who can build anything. Only the Abigail/Mary Ann character can survive. Mary Ann, one might recall, was a farmer, and used her knowledge of crops and cultivation to aid her fellow castaways. 

In “Triangle of Sadness,” Abigail realizes that she’s surrounded by mooks and buffoons who have nothing but a sense of entitlement. Because she is politically aware, she refuses to fall into the old mold of being a servant. Instead, everyone else becomes her servant. Including the bumbling idiot character. 

Sherwood Schwartz passed away in 2011 at the age of 91, so he never had a chance to see Östlund’s spin on his TV series, but he may have been flattered by the dark satire. It seems that a three-hour tour can, in the right hands, turn into a comedic game of vomiting and class-reconsideration.