“Saltburn” is Almost Great
Saltburn is Emerald Fennell’s second film, after her debut film from 2020 Promising Young Woman was generally well received and garnered her an Oscar win for best screenplay. I still have yet to see Promising Young Woman but previously enjoyed her work on the second season of Killing Eve, which certainly fell short of the incredible first season, but was fun, confident, cheesy, and twisted in its own way. Saltburn comes achingly close to being something I’d really enjoy.
It focuses on Oxford student Oliver Quick, played by Berry Keoghan, who becomes infatuated with cool rich kid Felix Catton, played by Jacob Elordi, who befriends him and eventually invites him to come stay at his home for the Summer, a gothic estate called Saltburn. There, he meets Felix’s parents James and Elspeth, played by Richard E Grant and Rosamund Pike, his sister Venetia, played by Alison Oliver, and sees again Farleigh Start, Felix’s cousin and classmate of theirs, played by Archie Madekwe. Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant are particularly great as these abundantly wealthy people with no sense of reality, staying in their manor with somewhere around a dozen servants who are constantly in the background or are just seen at the edges of the frame. They deliver many of the films most comedic moments and are a joy to watch, along with Pamela, a longterm house guest played by Carey Mulligan. There isn’t a bad performance in the movie, and it’s great to see Berry Keoghan take a lead role after killing it in so many supporting performances.
The film plays as a psychosexual thriller/comedy wherein Oliver works to ensure that he is always entertaining and has a place at the table with these beautiful wealthy people in this enormous estate. He butts heads with Farleigh in school and then again at Saltburn, where Farleigh perhaps recognizes him as another outsider working to stay close with the immediate Catton family. Archie Madekwe as Farleigh stood out to me walking out of theater, both in that he gave a good performance, and his character on paper worked for me more than some other elements of the film did.
It is at its best during its montages, where it depicts Oliver and Felix becoming closer while Oliver tells him his tragic backstory during various parties, or the four college students enjoying themselves early on in their Summer together. Much of the film feels right aesthetically, it successfully captures the vibe it is working to achieve. It’s clear a lot of care went into ensuring that these surface elements provoke the right feeling, the shot composition and production design often evoke awe and are well done.
I really enjoyed several scenes in the movie, but the movie as a whole doesn’t become greater than those scenes individually. There are grossly shocking and funny scenes, and some really incredible moments I’ll remember fondly. The very last scene is great. However, there are also moments that last too long, or ones that are predictable from the moment a scene begins. It also tends to rely a little too much on shock value. It is a strange, bizarre movie, though it never really gets surreal or psychedelic as its premise may have allowed. There’s an attempt at a narrative reveal toward the very end, which by then felt wholly unnecessary; the events were heavily implied by the narrative and I thought we were to understand what had occurred off screen. If we were to see them on screen, having them play out in the narrative rather than being presented as a very predictable twist would have been much more satisfying and made a better film.
As a whole, the film rang a little hollow and unbalanced for me; its synopsis feels more interesting in hindsight than it was when watching it. Though, it will probably achieve a cult following over the years- it has all the elements of one, it just comes so close to being more. It almost provides some sort of commentary on class and power, but never quite commits to it. It plays with this sort of magnetic energy the beautiful wealthy people carry while also being somewhat repulsed by them, which is interesting, but wasn’t really enough to leave me satisfied. I’m curious how I’d feel about it during a rewatch, now that I know what a strange movie it is, and that I shouldn’t be looking for a commentary on the wealth it depicts.
