Starring Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan, Saltburn follows an outcast Oxford student, Oliver (Keoghan), who is invited by Felix (Elordi) to his family’s prodigious estate. As shocking nightmarish events overwhelm the residents of Saltburn, the primitive innocence of a crush turns into a subject more profound.
Immediately, Oliver Quick is introduced as a social reject–a hermit–who struggles to fit in with the upper-class majority at university. He meets Felix Catton, a wealthy and popular student who empathizes with his parent’s substance abuse and economic-class. When Felix learns about Oliver’s father’s death, he invites his new friend to his family’s house, Saltburn, for the summer. The establishment of Oliver and Felix’s dynamic exposes Oliver’s stalking. His obsession with Felix is depicted using darkness and perspective, giving a true sense of being watched and successfully giving me goosebumps. But did Oliver honestly have feelings for his only friend?
Saltburn suggests a larger theme when Oliver meets Felix’s parents: Sir James and Lady Elspeth, sister Venetia, and cousin Farleigh. Oliver quickly learns that the Catton family is stereotypically aristocratic: impudent, self-absorbed, and unemotional. Although typically uninviting of most people, Oliver is welcomed by Felix’s family. But don’t take this the wrong way; Oliver uses this to his advantage. Because of Oliver’s questionable and wildly inappropriate actions with the family at Saltburn, the audience is hindsighted from the true message of the movie. My first thought watching Saltburn was: Oh, it’s just another movie about unrequited love and dangerous obsession. But the film’s plot twist really made me rethink what this two hour psychological whirlwind was about.
[SPOILER] The plot subverses from ‘obsession of someone’ to ‘obsession of revenge’ when the Catton family is taken down, one by one: Farleigh is evicted, Felix is found dead in the middle of the estate’s hedge maze, Venetia commits suicide in a bathtub, James dies due to poor health, and finally Elspeth perishes on her deathbed. Viewers learn that Oliver was the culprit of these events, even successfully planning to meet Felix.
To me, Oliver only desired vengeance from Felix’s rejection. When the truth came to light that Oliver had been lying about his upbringing, he confessed his admiration for Felix, begging to reconcile their relationship. The prospect that Oliver would have to leave Saltburn and return to his lonely reality, with the ill-natured character of the Catton family, compelled him to do the unthinkable. This movie is truly about questioning how far one can go, and the need to control.
Though slightly deranged, Oliver is a genius. The film’s Oscar-winning writer-director Emerald Fennell hints at the psych of Saltburn’s main character. She confessed to Time Magazine, “[Oliver] gives [Elspeth] what she wants, really, which is to be told she’s a good person. And she tells him that her daughter is a masochist and has an eating disorder. That’s the information that he takes into the next scene, telling Venetia that her body, rather than something disgusting, is in fact beautiful.” Oliver wants to rebuild a narrative for himself: a lonely schoolboy to someone with power. Stemming from his Oxford environment, Oliver yearns to be rid of rejection, a reason why–due to the circumstances–he earned the respect of the Cattons and later killed them.
With hints of Brideshead Revisited and Wuthering Heights, Saltburn is a work of art that inflicts interrogation, surprises, and reflection of our deepest desires. Although interpretations of this film are nuanced, I have never seen plot and camera work aspects so intriguing as Fennell’s. The aspect ratio to its pure provocativeness are just a few details that compel its intended mass emotions. Saltburn is creepy, intense, and distressing yet you’ll still keep watching.
