Ruben Ostlund Doesn’t Want You to Get Too Comfortable

For a filmmaker whose most up-to-date film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards and who has twice received the Palme d’Or, the highest prize on the Cannes Film Festival, it would sound unusual to listen to Ruben Ostlund say he doesn’t deal with success.

“I’m much more interested in when we fail as human beings than when we succeed,” mentioned the Swedish director, who will lead the jury at this yr’s pageant, which runs from Tuesday to May 27.

Mr. Ostlund, 49, received the Palme d’Or, final yr for “Triangle of Sadness,” a category satire set aboard a doomed luxurious yacht, and for his earlier characteristic, “The Square,” an unsparing sendup of the artwork world, in 2017. Mr. Ostlund is one among solely 9 filmmakers who’ve a number of Palmes d’Or to his credit score — and one among three to win the award for consecutive movies.

After its success at Cannes, “Triangle of Sadness,” which was Mr. Ostlund’s first movie totally in English, went on to change into an art-house hit in each Europe and America, and was nominated for 3 Oscars — for finest image, finest director and finest unique screenplay — however didn’t win any.

In his three most up-to-date options, beginning with 2014’s “Force Majeure,” Mr. Ostlund has consciously tried to get away from a sure sort of European art-house movie that’s usually cerebral, difficult and extreme.

“I wanted to create a wild, entertaining ride at the same time that I was trying to talk about the content that I thought was important or that I was curious about, and not making a contradiction between those things,” he mentioned in late April throughout a video interview, talking from his home in Campos, Majorca.

He pointed to the political comedies of Lina Wertmüller, the Italian director whose 1974 movie “Swept Away” was a transparent touchstone for “Triangle of Sadness,” and the surreal provocations of the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel as examples of serious-minded movies which are additionally nice enjoyable to observe.

In a assertion asserting Mr. Ostlund as jury president in February, pageant organizers referred to as the choice a “tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself.”

“Contrary to popular belief, thought-provoking cinema can also be popular,” Philippe Bober, one of many producers on “Triangle of Sadness,” wrote in an e-mail.

“We want to make uncompromising auteur films but also to embrace the audience,” Mr. Bober continued. He has labored with Mr. Ostlund since 2005.

“The bad news for producers,” Mr. Bober added, referring to himself and the movie’s different Oscar-nominated producer, Erik Hemmendorff, “is that if you want to make good films, you have to support your directors’ radicalism when they are experimenting with form and content for a long period of time before you make money.”

The important and widespread popularity of “Triangle of Sadness” appears a vindication of Mr. Bober’s religion in Mr. Ostlund.

The humor, usually acid-laced, that makes the Swedish director’s movies so entertaining is commonly deeply discomfiting — and generally downright squirmworthy. This has proved divisive, with some viewers relating to his work as manipulative or downright merciless (“Triangle of Sadness” contains an audaciously lengthy vomiting scene), and others hailing him as an uncommonly perceptive social commentator.

“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund mentioned, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.” He added that he tried to create “scenes where I believe that, yeah, this is an accurate and a true picture of our behavior” with out pointing fingers.

“I’m happy,” he added, “if I can reach the level of a really good sociological experiment.”

According to Owen Gleiberman, chief movie critic for Variety journal, “Triangle of Sadness” is “very much a movie of its moment.”

“It’s about the 1 percent, and it’s about the 1 percent getting their comeuppance. And that’s a good theme and it’s a gratifying theme,” mentioned Mr. Gleiberman, who attended his first Cannes Film Festival in 1996. At the identical time, he mentioned he felt that the movie was “too in love with its own satirical excess.” While he was delighted by the surprising Palme d’Or win for “The Square,” he felt “Triangle of Sadness” was much less deserving of the prize.

“There’s no rule that says that a director shouldn’t take the Palme d’Or twice in five years,” Mr. Gleiberman mentioned. “But when that happens, it’s usually an indication not that he has made two masterpieces, but that he’s become a Cannes darling.” As such, the truth that Mr. Ostlund was tapped to move the Cannes jury, Mr. Gleiberman added, “makes perfect sense.”

“I hesitated a little bit because of the burden of the position actually,” Mr. Ostlund mentioned about being requested to chair the jury. His eight co-jurors embrace the American actors Paul Dano and Brie Larson, the Argentine director Damián Szifron, and the French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, who received the Palme d’Or in 2021 for “Titane,” a controversial body-horror movie.

Even although nobody individual will get to resolve the winners, the awards at Cannes usually change into recognized with that yr’s jury president. Historically talking, the movies which have taken the Palme d’Or, Mr. Gleiberman steered, are “not some list of masterpieces.”

“It’s more like the good, the bad and the ugly,” he mentioned.

Mr. Ostlund appeared all too conscious of this when he steered that the Palme d’Or awarded by a jury president is “something that can follow you then through your career,” for good or for unwell.

But Mr. Ostlund mentioned it was necessary, above all, for him to endorse what Cannes stands for. “For me, it is the festival in the world that is on the barricades fighting for cinema” and a “provocative approach to cinema as an art form,” he mentioned.

“The last year when I had been traveling around with ‘Triangle of Sadness,’ I have tried to really promote cinema, talked about the advantage of cinema, talked about what are the qualities of watching things together instead of sitting in front of an individual screen,” he added.

The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, one other Cannes favourite, mentioned that the pageant linked him to an “ethical, fundamental state of what does that mean to be a filmmaker and a true believer in film as the seventh art.”

Films by Mr. Mundruczo, 48, and Mr. Ostlund have shared lineups at Cannes a number of instances. In 2014, they each headlined the pageant’s Un Certain Regard sidebar: Mr. Mundruczo’s “White God” received prime prize and Mr. Ostlund’s “Force Majeure” took the jury prize. Three of Mr. Mundruczo’s different movies have screened in the principle competitors at Cannes; he was invited to be a juror at Cannes twice however declined due to prior commitments.

While expressing reservations about operating movies like horses in a race, Mr. Mundruczo, who has chaired juries at different festivals, mentioned he loved the expertise — and never solely as a result of it pressured him to soak up a number of movies a day.

“As a jury member, you feel like you can give your taste, your honesty and your vision of the future of cinema and all your love of cinema,” Mr. Mundruczo mentioned in an interview in Berlin, the place he lives.

Mr. Ostlund, who has additionally served on movie pageant juries earlier than, mentioned it was necessary to maintain the group dynamics and ensure everybody “feels that they are seen.”

“I think I will have a very Swedish approach when it comes to running the jury,” he mentioned.

“It will be a democracy.”