Cycling to class one day, Felix gets a flat tyre – and who should be there by the side of the road, ready to sacrifice his own steed but Oliver? A bike loan is, apparently, all that is required to secure intimate friendship with the most popular man on campus. This is the first jarring example of the story’s superficial treatment of its characters, an issue that becomes increasingly ruinous as the film swings for psychodrama territory, with the fatal flaw that the script offers caricatures rather than people. The central relationship between a beautiful, rich, golden boy and a homoerotically yearning nobody calls to mind The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and the comparison does Saltburn no favours. While Anthony Minghella’s film thrums with shifting psychological currents that build an overpowering tension, Fennell undercuts every suggestion of genuine drama with pop-culture-savvy punchlines to the point of diminishing returns.
Sophie Monks Kaufman
I came across Saltburn on the front page of Prime Video; the description sounded intriguing enough and I saw a couple of offhand mentions on social media as well, so I decided to watch it. I can’t report the level of shock or outrage that some expressed at the explicit scenes, nor the enthusiasm other critics displayed. It was just a bad movie without direction or purpose that elevated excessive images to conceal its hollowness.
The main issue of the story for me was the central character Oliver, his lack of internal coherence as the movie slowly unveils his supposed master scheme. From the opening scenes the actor felt too mature for the role; I was expecting him to be a teacher at Oxford, not a junior student. He repeatedly monologues about his infatuation with Felix in short interludes, and his extreme sexual displays are meant to attest to this searing, yet unsatisfiable desire. But at the same time, we get glimpses of darker intentions via his manipulations, spreading rumors and discord in the Catton household.
The final revelation that his end-goal all along was insinuating himself into the clan and eliminating its members one by one to inherit their estate falls flat and unrealistic. Are we supposed to accept that he was so avid about Felix that he violently wailed on his grave (and crying was merely the beginning…) but was planning to murder him all along and did so in cold blood while meticulously covering his tracks?! Oliver is clearly supposed to be a sociopath, but I do not grasp why this buildup around his wild passion. Was that a misdirection for the audience? A tale he told himself to pass the decades as he waited for his plan to come to fruition?
Proud Saltburn lover like yeah sometimes a hot boy with a cigarette and an eyebrow piercing will make you go insane that’s just life babe
— runes (@varunikask) November 25, 2023
These two halves of Oliver as are portrayed here are hard to reconcile in my view, and it makes the whole thing a rambling mess. As if the writer couldn’t decide between these competing motivations and instead picked thrilling bits from both that fit poorly together in the final story. I suppose the moral should be that the only thing more sickening than people with power and wealth are the people craving to replace them.
The movie has its moments though, and they mostly revolve around Rosamund Pike’s lines. A particular standout for me was the lunch scene in the aftermath of Felix’ death, as shock and grief overcome people who never expected to experience these raw feelings in their lifetimes and are struggling to mask them with paper-thin layers of politeness and empty conversations. But isolated scenes cannot compensate for a lack of vision overall.
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