While always encouraging my fellow Nevada County residents to go out to a movie, Saltburn, now playing at The Onyx in Nevada City (and not for much longer) is one I will recommend only for those with strong constitutions. For sure, there’s more to admire than love aboutthis Gothic psychological thriller that will test the boundaries of even the toughest, most sophisticated viewers.
In most films, Oxford University is portrayed as a fairytale palace for the mind (even when stained by treachery and murder). But seen through the narrow gaze of the Dickensian-named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), it’s a cramped and haunted maze of Gothic shadows, a cruel obstacle course for virginal, unwary souls such as he. A scholarship student and a hapless nerd, Oliver oozes vulnerability and stirs our sympathy as he wanders the campus’s hallowed grounds with pinched shoulders and downcast eyes, a mumbling peasant in a kingdom of cold-hearted, eloquent toffs.
But in these dark warrens, Oliver comes upon the light he’s been looking for as he becomes obsessed at first sight with Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Felix is an exquisite model of male beauty. His face is like fine-boned porcelain China, his hair a tousled crown of raven-black. He is the loveliest—and nearly the wealthiest–man on campus and beloved by all, the beating heart of every party.
Oliver rushes to him like a moth to the flame. As he campaigns to move from rank outsider to cherished insider, his imagination blazes with vivid fantasies, even as he’s warned that Felix will pick him up and throw him away like a toy, as the rich and beautiful are wont to do. But all it takes is one small favor, involving a conveniently flat bicycle tire, for Felix to wrap his sculpted arms around Oliver, plant a kiss on his bicycle helmet, and welcome him into his privileged circle.
Meanwhile, our suspicions on innocent Oliver’s behalf intensify, along with ever boiling sexual tension. At times Oliver presses so close, Felix, an apparently generous soul, becomes annoyed by the boy’s neediness and threatens to send him back out into the cold. But with summer break comes tragic family news that leaves Oliver alone in the world with no place to go.
Without hesitation, Felix invites Oliver to come spend the summer with him at Saltburn, the Catton family estate. Oliver resists at first before caving in to Felix’s relentless charm. (as our hearts cry out, No, Oliver! Don’t go!)
Oliver’s arrival at the gloomy pile of Saltburn is as unsettling as Jonathan Harker’s arrival at Castle Dracula. Duncan (Paul Rhys), the lugubrious butler, greets him with the ominous silence of a zookeeper at feeding time. Felix, meanwhile, tries to make Oliver feel at home as he kindly leads him through mansion’s maze of hallways to the library (strangely empty of books), where the Cattons sprawl about like abandoned dolls.
The Catton family seem a sorry lot, selfish certainly, but also sad and maybe not as evil as we’ve been conditioned to expect. They’ve been smothered in wealth and privilege for so long, they’ve lost all sense of good manners as they struggle to maintain the façade demanded by the rules of a game they can no longer grasp.
At the head of the table sits Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant) and his wife, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), along with their slatternly daughter, Venetia (Alison Oliver). In addition, there’s poor dear Pamela (Carey Mulligan), a guest who, like Oliver, may be another fly in their web. Meanwhile their American cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), acts the know-it-all nihilist, confident he’s the only one who sees everyone else’s corruption.
Among this crowd, Felix seems the kind and sane one. Embarrassed by his family, he handles Oliver with care, seeing to his every need, trying to protect his young charge from family mischief. As Oliver pursues his obsession with Felix with creepy fervor, he’s welcomed at the family table, despite his awkwardness. Eventually, events take a series of increasingly bizarre, perverse, and at times, stomach-churning twists as Oliver reveals a stunning resourcefulness.
Saltburn is a brilliantly crafted and ultra-nasty inversion of Downton Abbey, and also an example of the “Cinema of Cruelty.” Its portrait of the mores of the rich will remind veteran cineastes of Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game (1939). It’s as cynical and abrasive as anything made by Billy Wilder and Sam Peckinpah, even approaching the cruel grotesquery of Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998). It constantly, and often brilliantly, subverts our expectations, creating wave after wave of shock with serrated wit.
Writer-director Emerald Fennell rightly chose to film this disturbing tale in classic Academy ratio (an aspect I’d like to see more often). The square screen is perfect for capturing intimacy, of course, but it can also evoke a shoulder-crushing claustrophobia. Photographed by Linus Sandgren, every frame bursts with detail and is painted in dark, turbid colors that seem to run together, like in a Turner painting, with danger constantly pressing in from every side. In addition, composer Anthony Willis has written one of th is year’s best film scores, composing string sections reminiscent of Bernard Hermann that add layers of atmospheric menace.
As we’d expect from a British film, the actors are terrific. Rosamund Pike is a standout as Elspeth, revealing the poignant emptiness behind her privilege, as she, along with Richard E. Grant, struggle to maintain their chipper composure as their reality is slowly eaten away. Jacob Elordi who did excellent work as Elvis Presley in Priscilla earlier this year, astounds as Felix Catton. He’s impossibly handsome, surprisingly sympathetic, and a knockout leading man, a potential Cary Grant for an age in sore need of one.
Saltburn, like Happiness, doesn’t want to be loved by everyone, and that’s fine, but even so, it goes too damned far. Even this non-prude felt compelled to look away more than once and walked out leaving his popcorn half-finished. At times, this class-warfare comedy seems more like anti-class warfare. Though it shares similar politics, it feels the opposite of Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite (2019), a more forgiving and greater film by far. Saltburn forgives nothing, not even the audience. It does more than push the envelope: It rips it open, spilling ugliness across the screen and filling the heart with sour feeling.
Some of this, sad to say, is due to Barry Keoghan’s portrayal as Oliver. As he showed in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Keoghan is a wonderfully sly, deceptive actor who wears the mask of innocence like no other. His doughy face is one you don’t think to look at until you’re forced to, at which point you notice a sudden dark shift in his little eyes.
In Oliver, Keoghan plays a dead man who, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, kills the thing he loves—a needy but loveless person. Reports indicate director Fennell gave him free reign to improvise. But I wish she hadn’t. The result turns a portrait of desperation into a self-indulgent wallow that detracts from the overall film. “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked on several occasions. I wonder if director Fennell put the same question. Maybe he should have listened.
Thomas Burchfield’s short story “McCain, the Stranger” is in the online version of Mystery Tribune. His article “Noir or Not?: Straw Dogs” is in the current issue of Noir City magazine. A freelance editor, he’s also the author of the short story “Lucky Day” in the anthology Berkeley Noir (Akashic Press 2020), He’s also the author of Butchertown (Ambler House 2017), a ripping, 1920s gangster thriller and the award-winning contemporary vampire novel Dragon’s Ark.