Sen­si­tive Scum­bags: The male char­ac­ters in the films of Ruben Östlund

From var­i­ous, vague­ly out­ra­geous pub­lic appear­ances at film fes­ti­vals across the globe, it would prob­a­bly be sound to deduce that film­mak­er Ruben Östlund is not a shy per­son. Both times he occu­pied the stage of the Grand The­atre Lumiere in Cannes to accept the Palme d’Or – for The Square in 2017 and Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness in 2022 – he opt­ed to lead the audi­ence in a wacky call-and-response rou­tine which also per­fect­ly sur­mised his MO as a film­mak­er: to do any­thing bar phys­i­cal­ly shak­ing the seat to pro­voke a reac­tion from his viewers.

Yet, unlike the tra­di­tion­al auteur, there’s lit­tle sense that Östlund sees cin­e­ma as an out­let for per­son­al reflec­tion or as a way to air his own inte­ri­or anx­i­eties. Ideas; yes, anx­i­eties; no way. It was in Cannes in 2014, at a screen­ing of his crowd-pleas­ing ski hol­i­day night­mare farce, Force Majeure, where I first encoun­tered his predilec­tion for writ­ing men who appear very dif­fer­ent to him­self. Instead of being for­ward, out­spo­ken and fear­less com­mu­ni­ca­tors, these men are sen­si­tive, frag­ile and blithe­ly unaware of their own extreme moral deficiencies. 

In this film, we receive a fair­ly thor­ough defen­es­tra­tion of tra­di­tion­al father­hood as a man, Johannes Kuhnke​’s Tomas, is intro­duced as a chest-beat­ing hunter-gath­er­er patri­arch-type and is quick­ly revealed to be a self-involved softy at heart. Östlund takes great glee in pun­ish­ing this man for the amuse­ment of the audi­ence, and stretch­es his inces­sant needling to the point of dis­com­fort. The film offers a psy­cho­log­i­cal case study (and cri­tique) of knee-jerk self-preser­va­tion instincts, and in Östlund’s eyes, it’s always the man who will suc­cumb to his most base instincts. 

In The Square, we see a ver­sion of Tomas, albeit one oper­at­ing in a dif­fer­ent social con­text. His defi­cien­cies, as well, are teased out through alter­na­tive means. Claes Bang​’s Chris­t­ian exudes con­fi­dence and poise as the head cura­tor of a fan­cy Stock­holm art gallery. The film’s iron­ic state­ment of intent is intro­duced in its open­ing scene, as Chris­t­ian attempts to mas­sive­ly over­com­pen­sate for his intel­lec­tu­al short­com­ings by talk­ing in gar­bled cul­ture speak dur­ing a live Q&A ses­sion. Lat­er, his activ­i­ties sur­round­ing the pro­mo­tion of a new con­cep­tu­al art exhib­it called The Square, which pro­fess­es to be a space of equal­i­ty and peace­able under­stand­ing, clash with his ques­tion­able long-game attempts at revenge on a thief who steals his wal­let and phone.

The iron­i­cal­ly named Chris­t­ian – like Tomas before him – reverts to empa­thy-free preser­va­tion instincts as soon as the sit­u­a­tion allows it. There’s an extreme pet­ti­ness to his actions, for which he is even­tu­al­ly pun­ished, but not in such an extreme fash­ion as his for­bear – he is ring fenced a lit­tle more tight­ly by his sta­tus as a lead­ing voice in the arts. Östlund appears to believe that men want to project the image of empa­thy while enact­ing just the oppo­site through their arro­gance and hard­wired dis­dain for any­thing that muf­fles per­son­al free­doms. To be male, is to accept a life of per­for­ma­tive strength and dominance.

Final­ly, in Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness, we meet the hap­less Carl, who is slight­ly dif­fer­ent to Tomas and Chris­t­ian, but not so dif­fer­ent as to pre­vent him from exist­ing as an Östlun­di­an broth­er-in-arms. This osten­ta­tious and icky class alle­go­ry presents Carl, played by Har­ris Dick­in­son, as a thought­ful male mod­el who is seen ques­tion­ing (rather force­ful­ly!) his girlfriend’s request that he – the man – should pay the bill at din­ner. Here, the direc­tor gives us a male char­ac­ter who fights back against cer­tain con­ser­v­a­tive pre­cepts of the patri­archy, and seems to have broad­ly tak­en on some zeit­geisty pol­i­tics about sex­u­al equality. 

As with Force Majeure and The Square, a social infrac­tion has been com­mit­ted, and will be duly pun­ished through­out the course of the film. Carl wants to have his sen­si­tive beta male cake and eat it, and when a lux­u­ry cruise for social influ­ences goes extreme­ly wrong, he is no longer wor­ried about over­turn­ing anti­quat­ed gen­der stereo­types. In fact, he seems hap­py to uphold them and revert to his inner him­bo for dear life.

As a film­mak­er, Östlund is unfor­giv­ing, some might say vague­ly demon­ic, in the man­ner he reveals and chides con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ter traits and the male ego. Some may see reflec­tions of them­selves in these trag­ic men who are stripped of their dig­ni­ty in the name of satir­i­cal bur­lesque. The scene in Force Majeure where Tomas weeps for what feels like ten straight min­utes had pun­ters howl­ing in the aisles in Cannes, and it seems that Östlund knows that, more than any­thing, peo­ple love to see these men stripped of their sta­tus and made to grov­el for a reprieve.

Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness is a Cur­zon Film release. Catch it in cin­e­mas nation­wide from 28 October.