TRIANGLE OF SADNESS and RAGING BULL.
Two great movies I may never watch again.
This week I watched two films that, before viewing, I knew almost nothing about: Triangle of Sadness (2022) and Raging Bull (1980).
Here’s what I knew about Triangle of Sadness: there’s one very prolonged and particularly disgusting sequence of people getting very, very seasick.
Here’s what I knew about Raging Bull: It stars Robert De Niro. There’s boxing.
It was my own fault that, in 2023, I still had never seen Raging Bull and knew virtually nothing about the actual plot, which was way more about extreme marital discord (putting this mildly) than I would have foreseen.
However, if you choose to stomach it, I recommend knowing as little about Triangle of Sadness as possible before a viewing, which isn’t too hard since this film and its cast flew mostly under the radar even in the wake of its Best Picture nomination.
Here’s what I watched this week:
Triangle of Sadness
Yes, this film is a 2023 Best Picture nominee. Had I really heard of this movie before that announcement? Had anyone, besides Film Twitter?
Triangle of Sadness, a film which takes place over three unhinged acts, is a satirical black comedy. Actually, let me rephrase that: it is a grotesque, uncomfortable, mostly batshit skewering of the rich with absolutely zero subtleties about who, exactly, it means to rake across the coals. It’s funny, weird, and a little bit upsetting.
Almost every scene, from an uncomfortable dinner between dating models Yaya (Charlbi Dean, who passed away unexpectedly after completion of the film) and Carl (Harris Dickinson), to the aforementioned seasickness extravaganza aboard a luxury yacht, to the final act set on a “deserted” island, is a slow, painful destruction of societal status and all its weirdness, like slowly ripping apart a succulent marsh mellow until all you’re left with is a sticky, gloppy mess. But hey, it tastes kind of good!
It is Triangle of Sadness’s third act that finally unearths the rage waiting at the opposite end of wealth, when the gap between those of status and those who clean the toilets finally collapses and the results are, well, violent. Actually, forget the third act: the last three minutes of Triangle of Sadness are well worth wading through any nausea or revulsion that comes before.
Triangle of Sadness is available to rent on Apple TV.
Raging Bull
Raging Bull is iconic, so I apologize to the film community at large for having never seen it until now, and to my close personal friend, Martin Scorsese, who attended my graduation and whose tiny head I saw on a giant screen which served as the only indication he was in the same room.
I had zero clue Raging Bull is A) a biography of real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, and B) mostly about Jake’s (Robert De Niro) volatile paranoia and jealousy within his marriage to Vickie (Cathy Moriarty).
Raging Bull is a fantastic film I will probably never watch again. It’s (appropriately) slow, and is a fairly straightforward depiction of marital abuse without melodrama (which is probably the point, and in fact makes it a much harder watch). It’s a film soaked in humanness, the kind of humanness that is the real kind because it is awkward, odd, uncomfortable, doesn’t altogether make sense, and rarely do the interactions or conversations have a clear resolution. In particular, the interactions between Jake and his brother, Joey (Joe Effin’ Pesci!!!) have no pretense of artificially conjured dialogue; the film seems to expand to fit around them, negotiating itself to their world instead of the other way around.
Raging Bull is available to stream on HBO Max.