Writer-director Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” doesn’t work as a rich-eater fun. Many thoughts have been written about the wealthy, but nothing specifically about race.
“What is this movie about?” is a question I kept coming back to while watching “Saltburn.” Gorgeously shot, writer-director Emerald Fennell's new film taunts Britain's rich and filthy riches and filthiness, with the humor getting darker and darker as one baffling event ensues in one increasingly abhorrent scene after another. I'll go. Oh, the performance is really fun.
But what? teeth Is that actually true?Reviews rated it highly as luxurious. eat rich movie, prove it again We don't know what that means. Indeed, “Saltburn'' has a wealthy character whose shallowness is comically painful, and an Oliver outside of that bubble who is as fascinated by the world as he is exiled from it. There's a character named Barry Keoghan.
However, these are just details.
So when Oliver descends into violence and self-indulgent depravity against the privileged, it's hard to get the sense that he's motivated by revenge or envy. Or is the problem with Fennell or the film itself? Which is it?—the exclusion of wealth in England? capitalism? Especially wealthy people?
What we really have here is a movie about a disenfranchised young man running wild against what he has and who he is. Rather, as far as we know, it's about who he's not.
That's what makes “Saltburn” so intriguing as it is frustrating. Instead, we get a beautiful film about a clever young man who meets Felix (Jacob Elordi) and his friends while studying at Oxford University, smells the money-making lifestyle, and maliciously infiltrates their circle. . He comes up with a plan to be invited to Felix's house, or castle, during school breaks.
“Saltburn'' is far more the story of a maniac with no cause than an anti-capitalist drivel to burn everything down.
From there, he gradually wreaks havoc. It's not vengeful. It's maniac.
Remember Matt Damon in the similar 1999 homosexual thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley? He systematically infiltrates Jude Law's debauched life and turns it upside down. It's nothing like 2019's “Ready or Not,” where the main character has good reason to protect his life from his murderous and wealthy in-laws.
Oliver is functionally insane and takes it out on his stupid, self-centered family whose only flaw is that they are stupid and self-absorbed. It's not like you want them dead. To avoid spoilers, suffice it to say that this movie vaguely points out the problem of the disparity between rich and poor, but fails to grasp the concept of how poverty and wealth are related to each other.
This movie doesn't focus on the haves and have-nots. Rather, it focuses on what you have and what you want. It's a different conversation, one that points out the respective relationships between capitalism and wealth. There's room for scrutiny, but this movie doesn't care about that.
Part of the problem lies in how we expect a movie like “Saltburn'' to be: what we project onto the movie vs. what the movie actually is. Our own worldview and the worldview presented on screen. This movie also falls under that category. But it's also not particularly interesting in and of itself.
Stripped of its pretentious “eat the rich” element, “Saltburn” manages to navigate its absurdist entertainment.
“Saltburn” seeks to captivate the audience with absurdity, fascinating people and essential jokes. But there's no pulse.
Black tie is required for dinner in the family dining room. The scene where Felix's sister (Alison Oliver) is attacked on the lawn in the middle of the night. The camera focuses on Felix's tongue as he falls into the bathtub, and the moment he orgasmically swallows Felix's dirty bathwater.
Fennell seems to delight in revolting her audience, drawing us intimately into a singular, grotesque story that capitalism and desire both had a hand in constructing. We're grounded in Oliver's perspective throughout “Saltburn,” which makes the character at least more relatable to the audience.
We see both his desire for Felix and all the luxurious decorations in the mansion in equal measure. Fennell then pointed out to us the ripples in Felix's abs and the luscious decorations of the house and the land around it.
There is joy in that. The silly banter among Felix's relatives, including his cousin Farley (Archie Madekwe, we'll get to who later), his mother (Rosamund Pike), and father (Richard E. Grant), is its thrill. It just adds more.
Unsurprisingly, Fennell delivers some great dialogue in “Saltburn,” but it’s not an inspired story. It's certainly fun to watch, especially among the large theater audiences it's for, but it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s far from incredibly bold.”promising young woman' is her previous directorial work.
That's especially true when you think more deeply about the story and what's missing from it. For example, Farley, Felix's snob, interracial homosexual relative, becomes infatuated with Oliver as he gains more access to the house and wins superficial affection from Felix's other family members. I get jealous.
Director Emerald Fennell's latest film shows the limits of a film that can simultaneously poke fun at racial issues while mocking privileged people.
This is often built into the overall atmosphere of retribution baked into the structure of the story. But when Farley brought up his sincere concerns to Felix about how easy it was for Oliver to join the family seductively, in contrast to his own position within the household, it was ignored. I did.
That negative attitude feels true to Felix, but in a story meant to provoke thoughts about privilege, it only amplifies issues of race. The more we learn about Oliver in the movie, the more it gets especially bad. In predominantly white films like this, class often becomes the default entry point into discussions of wealth, further complicating it, even though race is just as important.
Movies set in England — and UK in general — rarely attempts to engage in racial politics. “Saltburn” has the opportunity to do that more deeply, but it doesn't.
The silver lining, however, is that Fennell seems to have realized her blind spot here. Vogue interviewworked with Madekwe on how to address this issue more explicitly in the film.
However, this is not expressed very clearly in the movie. Farley's efforts to portray that he constantly feels the need to perform within his white family are undermined by the more pronounced boasts he utters even in scenes without his family. Who is he in this story? It's clearly collateral damage.
Still, if we're talking about a story that actually faces problems, I can't help but wonder what Saltburn would have been like if the bitter character at the heart of the story had been Farley instead of Oliver. . Then you might have found something here.
“Saltburn” is currently showing in select theaters and will be released nationwide on November 22nd.
