Saltburn | Movie Review by Arnold Wayne Jones
Sick Burn
Saltburn Wallows in the Inevitability of Its Own Twisted Vision of the World
Review by Arnold Wayne Jones
Emerald Fennell has only written and directed two feature films, but that’s enough for her to carve out a distinctive style… but also enough to become slightly predictable. She seems to take Aristotle’s dictum – that the best stories’ endings are both surprising and inevitable – profoundly to heart. In her acclaimed debut, Promising Young Woman, she told the story of Cassandra (Carey Mulligan), a woman who turns past trauma into a mission to seek vengeance against any men who exploit or assault women. Cassandra isn’t a murderer (her revenge is more of the cautionary “taste of your own medicine” variety) but we know from the start she’ll save the best for a gloriously over-the-top last – that’s the”inevitable” part. (Fennell even named her after the Greek mythological seer, who prophesied the future even though nobody ever believed her.) What we are surprised by (spoiler alert here) is that Cassandra’s plan goes off course and she herself ends up murdered well before the denouement – that’s the “surprise.” Delicious ending? Sure. But also a little unsatisfying – a bittersweet dessert, like a dark chocolate torte or lemon pie.
Her latest, Saltburn, is more sure-footed directorially, but like PYM, the ending is not a great surprise, though the journey often can be.
Fennell has shifted her focus from a disturbed woman to an even younger, even more disturbed man. The great, unsettling Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a scholarship-kid attending Oxford University, surrounded by nothing but spoiled rich kids who can’t resist maximizing their dickishness whenever he’s near them It’s not enough that they are privileged brats who could afford to show a little grace; they’re also attractive and clever and cool, and Oliver longs to be included in their world. Like an abused mutt, he slowly ingratiates himself to the athletic ringleader, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Felix is gorgeous and charismatic but also a softie, and he becomes curious about this kid from the other side of the tracks. By social osmosis, Oliver is begrudgingly accepted into the fold by everyone except Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), himself a cash-poor relation of Felix, dependent in part on his family’s largesse. Oliver wheedles an invitation to Felix’s family estate, named Saltburn, for the summer, and there the sweet, unsuspecting naif mounts his grand scheme to be welcomed into class of the landed gentry.
None of this is unexpected – we suspect from the opening moments (the story is narrated by Oliver in flashback) that he had, and likely achieved, his master plan of social climbing. Many of the smaller twists along the way – specifically, Oliver’s life story predictably reveals itself as intentionally constructed, and not as dire as he pretends – don’t really catch us off guard, as Fennell’s track record or projecting her twists clues us in. And yet, the script does take some wild swings, basically by leap-frogging around plot points – even developments the audience may anticipate come at unexpected moments. (Calling the antihero lead Oliver Quick is a not-too-subtle mashup of Oliver Twist and his own improvisational machinations.) Ultimately, virtually every character ends up more or less where we would have imagined they would. But oh how fun it is getting there.
Fennell’s acid-tongued take on British society is so specific, it matters little that it might not be super fresh and inventive. She pulls no punches.
The first thing we notice is her decision to shoot the film in Academy ratio instead of widescreen, giving it the voyeuristic quality of a hi-def home movie. Then the tight editing, lavish production design and rich musical score elevate the proceedings.
Then, of course, there’s the dialogue, which crackles with secondary, even tertiary layers in the character-driven portrait of class differences. Unspoken tensions and rivalries lurk under the battle between the haves and have-nots. Throwaway lines end up being some of the smartest bits, and darkly funny meta commentary.
The casting, and the performances she extracts from everyone, push Saltburn from predictable social satire to compelling art film. Keoghan has only been around a half-dozen years, but since his breakout role in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and continuing through The Batman and The Banshees of Inisherin, he’s proven himself a resourceful and edgy character actor whose protean face both hides and reveals a tremendous amount of emotional depth. The Catton clan (Elordi, mom Rosamund Pike, dad Richard E. Grant, sister Alison Oliver) all function as “types” – rungs in Oliver’s ladder of success – but they deliver the goods. The homoerotic undercurrent suffuses the entire film with a dangerous, outsidery vibe.
Fennell may rely on a smallish bag of tricks to tell her tales, but Saltburn shows she’s talented enough to turn those gimmicks into something unusual in cinema today – an outcome that is as inevitable as it is surprising.
