SparkNotes Version
The Deep Dive (Spoiler Alert!)
Per her Academy nominated femcel flick Promising Young Woman, we already knew Emerald Fennel is up to the task to enter the depths of the dark discomfort. With its scathing look at rape culture and shocking attack on the patriarchy, Promising Young Woman exemplified female rage, Saltburn, on the other hand, journeyed into the heart of a distant cousin: outsider rage.
This outcast syndrome begins at Oxford with our protagonist, Barry Keoghan's unforgettable Oliver Quick (a name that echoes Dickensian charm). The year is 2006, and Oliver is a fish out of water among his wealthier peers... up until Felix Catton, Jacob Elordi's charismatic big fish on campus, takes a liking to the scholarship freshman. Yet Felix is sexy and popular, and Oliver, well, isn't, so when Oliver catches on that Felix has a soft spot for lost causes, Oliver manipulates Felix into making him his next charity case.
By the end of the school year, Oliver has finagled an invitation to Felix's adorned castle Saltburn as the summer amusement for Felix's eccentric aristocratic family, who allegedly served as inspiration for “most Evelyn Waugh’s characters”. Saltburn is a topsy-turvy Downton Abbey, and they play tennis in tuxedos. Enough said.
With my AMC stubs at hand (like c’mon, $x for 12 movies a month?!), I witnessed my fellow moviegoers turning towards their friends with this awkward smile – “Did you like it? I think I liked it. Did you like it?” It was the kind of film that no one really wanted to admit that they enjoyed, tiptoeing around the fact no one could look away as Oliver penetrates his best friend’s grave following his midnight snack slurping up of his semen-filled bathtub.
Amazon MGM’s marketing for this film was creme de la creme. Having watched the trailer, there was this general suspicious energy stemming from the mere glimpses of the Catton clan and an eery atmosphere to Saltburn that convinced me that the poor Oliver would find himself ensnared in a Get Out-esque conundrum with a British Addams family. But despite some oddities from Rosamund Pike’s clueless, vulnerable character talking her tongue off to , there wasn’t anything particularly devious about the Catton family – besides just being grade A elitist assholes and blithely oblivious . But Amazon MGM took me for a ride here, as I gave the benefit of the doubt to our unreliable narrator up until… the cringe-worthy visit to his family.
This surprise scene visiting Oliver's family stands as the true climax where the audience begins to comprehend the devious intentions behind Oliver's sadistic behaviors. Under the pretext that Oliver's father died and his mother is a hording drug addict, Felix gets a whiff of his friend's pathological personality and decides to excommunicate him from both Saltburn and his privileged circles at large, which proves to be Felix's fatal mistake.
But the thing is, witnessing Oliver’s reaction to Felix’s death, his solitary metldowns at his friend’s grave and emotional outbursts in Church, you really wouldn’t think he had the propensity to murder the object of his affection. While maybe I should have seen it coming, I wasn’t fully certain of Oliver’s intentions until he verbally confessed them as he laid over Elsbeth on her death bed. Maybe this is a me problem – maybe I just keep channeling the hapless, supportive Barry Keoghan character in The Banshees of Inisherin – but only in the ending montage displaying Oliver's manipulative, murderous actions was I fully convinced of everything that was right before my eyes.
Saltburn's narrative is told through a hindsight confession to Elsbeth prior to Oliver pulling out her feeding tube. From the film's onset, I presumed the older Oliver was either having a conversation with a therapist reflecting on the lives at Saltburn or being interviewed in an investigation years later related to something at Saltburn, but never did I expect the twist that we'd still be AT Saltburn many years later as a final punch to the aristocratic gut.
From being labeled a knockoff of the 1999 thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley to Fennel being godeed for trying to one-up the shoc facor in an ever surface-level manner, I've seen a lot of criticism for this film. But the pure art of a fabulous film funnels down to its ability to elicit sympathy for its antagonists, and no doubt this film comes on top through that sense. Oliver's motives and alibis were staring me in the face – but I still felt a sense of uncertainty regarding his ill-intentions. The narrative technique of an unreliable narrator always takes me for a doozy. This narrative strategy plays with the audience's perceptions and expectations, creating a sense of surprise or revelation as the true nature of the protagonist becomes apparent. And boy, was I surprised.
Jumping on the comparisons to The Talented Mr. Ripley (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow), I won't deny that Oliver was generated in the mold of Tom Ripley, a sociopathic social-striver played by Matt Damon, but the story of struggling to navigate social mobility is indeed a tale as old as time. We're in England rather than Italy, and I won't deny there's something much more calculated in Oliver's pursuits than Tom's who seemingly fell into his conniving behaviors, but it comes down to the fact that they're both addicts plagued by their own infatuations – and it's our choice as with all addicts struggling internally with their impulses whether to channel sympathy. When a director can play on our own emotions of desire and convince us that the protagonist isn't the social parasite they so obviously are, I call that a success.
There's always been a direct connection between addicts and lying to conceal their socially unacceptable desires – and when society creates this necessity of disguise, it's unsurprising that it can turn pathological. While Oliver's main choice of drug was Felix, he was indiscriminate to what he took, whether that be the mom, cousin, or sister. All in all, his addiction was overcoming his inferriority complex, and in order to do so, lying of one's true identity is necessary to disguise this addiction. Same goes for the Talented Mr. Tom Ripley. Both are prime emblems of the outsider rage.
So yes, Oliver ate the rich figuratively, and in a handful of vampiric scenes, literally, yet unlike the 2022 satirical horror The Menu or the Cannes Palme d'Or black comedy Triangle of Sadness, this doesn't fall into the same"Eat the Rich" film category, despite Oliver's success in consuming the power of the privileged. The essence of the phrase "Eat the Rich" is to symbolically express a desire for social justice, and there was no justice for the Catton family engulfed by Oliver's addiction.
While there were three of the most bizarre sex scenes I've seen since Timothy Chalamet's head-turning peach penetration in Call Me by Your Name and I'm unsure whether Oliver's naked waltz though the halls of Saltburn would be my preferred grand finale (at least we got a look at the package Farleigh was referring to), I surrendered myself to the absurdity of Fennel's dark mind, and I suggest you do as well.
Catch ya when the credits role!
Xx
