Saltburn (2023)
I had set out to watch Rebel Moon (I’m in the process of trying to write an extended something about Sucker Punch and I’m trying to ground it in Snyder’s larger body of work). I got as far as the opening narration and then went
Honestly, you could tell me it’s the greatest work of cinema of the last 50 years and I still wouldn’t care enough to get through that narration and the visual of a space penis thrusting through a space vagina.
So we ended up watching Saltburn.
My shorthand review for people at the moment is “It doesn’t hang together all that well but I had a lot of fun with it.”
I find that as I get further from it that I am finding it less memorable and I am more attuned to its flaws. But the act of watching it was a blast.
I’ll let you in on something - all critics grade on a curve always. There’s certain types of films that speak more to us (straight up, I will rarely find a straight romance film interesting - it can win a ton of awards, have great performances, and I’m probably going to just shrug, even if I am able to see what is working in it). There are times when we’re tired, or half drunk (or fully drunk - as I was the second time I saw The Phantom Menace, and yes that is the ideal state to watch that film in). There are times that just one thing will piss us off and the film is pretty much dead to us (not to bang on about the whales having subtitles in Avatar 2 again but…)
So Saltburn is the tale of Oliver Quick. Oxford freshman, smart but not rich. He catches the eye of (or the reverse, I’ll get to it) Felxi Catton who is proper old rich. Following the two coming closer together during the term, and a tragedy striking in Oliver’s life, Felix invites Oliver to join him for the summer at his family’s castle Saltburn.
Oliver’s presence disrupts the flow of the Catton family and the summer descends into mayhem, sex, death and rich people being snotty.
Rosmund Pike and Richard E. Grant are fantastic as Felix’s parents. For some reason Carey Mulligan is there for a bit (it’s a very thin part which she doesn’t do much with and then the character dies off screen). Everyone is very good in this film. Hell, I’m not sure that Richard E. Grant has had a role that is so in his pocket since Withnail.
Then there is Barry Keoghan. Holy hell, this performance. It’s very much a twin with Phoenix’s performance in The Master (though that is a far superior film). Keoghan has always been good (everyone who has seen Killing of a Sacred Deer knows this) but here he just goes for it. It’s one of those performances that is usually inhibited, where the actor can’t find a way to completely relax and dissolve into the scene.
Which is kind of what the film as a whole is doing. It just goes for it. It’s kind of the messy bitch of cinema. Really, the film revolves around 3 sexually transgressive scenes (which are in order, a hoot, sinister, and tragic) and kind of strings a narrative around it. I’ve not read any interviews with Emerald Fennell regarding the film but if the scene between Oliver and Venetia wasn’t the initial image she had when writing the film, I’d be shocked.
Or maybe it was the bathwater scene.
Unfortunately, the film kind of doesn’t work.
Once they arrive at Saltburn, Oliver pretty much becomes Tom Ripley. Given what has been presented to us prior to this, it’s hard to reconcile and in fact feels like he’s playing an entirely different character all together. The first act presents him as an innocent drawn to the flame of the Oxford rich. Suddenly he is a master schemer (though this is more told to us than shown but I have less hang ups on that than others).
At some point, it becomes clear that Oliver’s endgame is essentially to get rid of all the Cattons and acquire Saltburn for himself (somehow or other, I feel like inheritance laws are often unlike those of the real world when it comes to movies). Which, sure, but when did that become the plan? Cause up to that point it’s more about the psychosexual relationship of Oliver and Felix (and Venetia and Farleigh - my boy gets around) and trying to ascertain what Oliver is wanting out of that. But nope, he just wants to be rich and have a castle.
There’s two issues at play here.
There isn’t enough tension to properly present Oliver as an anti-hero to the audience. If we take Ripley as an example, that film (I’m talking Matt Damon here, not Hopper in The American Friend, though that film slaps) works because we a) understand what Ripley wants pretty much from the jump and b) there is an escalating series of events that puts Ripley in danger of being discovered which he has to overcome. This means that the tension helps to position the audience on Ripley’s side in the hopes that he can overcome this crisis. Which means that for all his murder, the audience roots for him.
Here, there is one point where Oliver’s big secret is revealed and even when that happens the tension isn’t great because the ultimate outcomes appears to be that he’ll have to leave Saltburn (and Felix) and no one will be any the wiser. Which isn’t helped by the audience not having great insight to what Oliver is ultimately wanting out of all of this (it’s not yet clear he’s after the big ass house).
Second, the class politics are a fucking mess. So, the rich are monstrous in their banality (though not monstrous enough to properly sell it, they actually read as a middle class WASPy family that’s renting a too big airbnb… but also they have servants)? And the poor will murder to become rich? But Oliver isn’t really all that poor, he’s just kind of lower middle class and sort of a prick who reads too much.
I’m not sure that’s what the film thinks it’s saying but that’s what the film is saying.
It could be a pretty solid foundation for a satire, if the film wasn’t so wrapped up in the psychosexual pomp of it all and actually gave itself time to explore what it is setting up.
But.
Here’s where I grade on a curve, cause I kind of don’t care too much about that?
The film might be messy and lacking some storytelling chops but it is so delightfully weird. This is a film where a devastated murderer fucks a grave. A film where Richard E. Grant just kind of plays who we all think he is in real life. And then there’s a tracking shot where Oliver dances naked through Saltburn to Sophie Ellis Baxter.
It’s a film that is all in on the intersection of sex and death in a way that I wanted Oppenheimer to be but wasn’t. In all its mess, it’s having a hell of a lot of fun. Sure, if you’re not on its wavelength, you probably aren’t going to have much (or really, any) fun with it.
It’s incredibly easy to bounce off this film. While the bathwater scene wasn’t a bridge too far for my wife, the moonlit scene of Oliver and Venetia sure as hell was (meanwhile, I’m sitting there laughing at how audacious it all is).
Because that’s the thing. It may not always work. Certainly the ‘how Oliver did it’ scene is unneccesary (and almost an indication of a lack of confidence - the audience largely will have worked out what he was and wasn’t responsible for by around the moment the breathing tube is ripped out, showing it to us actually takes some of the air out of it all). But it just swings so hard that even when it misses it gives you something kind of special. Seriously, Keoghan’s performance is probably worth the film alone.
I would take a film like that any day over the mountains of films that play it safe.