[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Film Brain visits the upper classes in Emerald Fennell's drama, with sumptuous cinematography and a terrific cast, but twists itself into confusion.
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00:00 This video is sponsored by Entertainment Earth.
00:02 Hello and welcome to Projector at the London Film Festival, and on this episode Barry Kogan
00:07 has an unforgettable summer that takes a dark turn when he visits Saltburn.
00:13 In 2006 and 2007, Oliver Quick, played by Barry Kogan, attends Oxford University on
00:34 a scholarship, feeling isolated from the other students because of his troubled background.
00:39 He eventually befriends Felix Katton, played by Jacob Elordi, who invites him to his family's
00:43 estate, Saltburn, for the summer, with Felix's mother, Elsbeth, played by Rosamund Pike,
00:48 his father James, played by Richard E. Grant, sister Venetia, played by Alison Oliver, and
00:53 cousin Farley, played by Archie Madekwe.
00:56 Once there, Oliver is drawn towards the Kattons' world of wealth and privilege, and Saltburn
01:00 may become a place he never leaves.
01:04 Saltburn is the second feature from Emerald Fennell, who previously won the Best Original
01:07 Screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman, a candy-coated revenge thriller that boasts
01:12 a fantastic performance by Carrie Mulligan, but has had a very polarising reception, especially
01:17 in regards to its ending.
01:19 I hadn't seen Promising Young Woman at the time I'd first seen Saltburn, I've now caught
01:24 up with it in the intervening time, and I do have to admit that I side a lot with the
01:28 film's detractors.
01:29 I think the third act of Promising Young Woman is an absolute mess.
01:33 With Saltburn, Fennell points to the satire of the British upper classes, and to some
01:37 degree to herself.
01:39 Fennell does come from a quite wealthy background, so she knows this world, and she knows how
01:44 to skewer it.
01:45 But also, the very specific setting of 2006-2007 at Oxford University, that's roughly around
01:51 the time that Fennell herself would have passed through that uni's doors.
01:55 So there is a degree of accuracy incorporated into the screenplay, and at first glance,
02:00 Saltburn seems like an eat-the-rich movie, the kind that we've had a lot since Parasite,
02:05 something like Triangle of Sadness, or The Menu, but in all honesty, I don't think it's
02:10 quite that.
02:11 There's a moment where the incredibly imposing butler tells Oliver, "Lots of people get
02:16 lost in Saltburn", and I would argue, so does the movie.
02:21 I've actually seen Saltburn twice now.
02:24 I first saw it at the BFI London Film Festival in early October, I revisited it in early
02:29 November at a public preview screening because I wanted to see how the film played after
02:35 you knew about the twists at the film's ending, where that actually worked in the
02:40 film's favour on a second viewing.
02:42 And having seen the movie a second time, I can now safely confirm, yeah, it's a bit
02:47 of a mess.
02:49 Saltburn is arguably at its best in its early scenes at Oxford University, which feel very
02:53 astutely observed, especially in terms of the class dynamic, Oliver steps into his halls
02:58 of residence and immediately he feels like an outsider, he's surrounded by other students
03:04 that are meeting up with their friends, and that's because they already know each other,
03:09 because they all come from rich and wealthy backgrounds.
03:13 For many of these families, going to Oxford is a rite of passage that every generation
03:19 goes through.
03:20 Not so for Oliver's family, Oliver has come in on a scholarship, Oliver does not come
03:25 from a privileged background, in fact he's endured a lot of hardship, Oliver says that
03:31 his mother is a drug addict and his dad dies early on in the movie, which is the action
03:37 that inspires Felix to invite him to Saltburn in the first place.
03:42 And Oliver struggles to make any kind of friends, he's awkward, he's nerdy, he's the only person
03:48 in his English class that has bothered to read the entire reading list over the summer,
03:52 which astonishes his professor, played by Reece Shearsmith, he really spent the summer
03:56 reading the King James Bible.
03:59 In fact the only person that seems to hang around Oliver's orbit is this odious maths
04:04 student played by Ewan Mitchell, who steals the few small scenes that he has early on
04:09 in the movie, with a character that can be best described as a sinister university challenge
04:15 contestant.
04:16 Oliver, every time he's on screen, he's repellent in some way, in fact, very memorably, he even
04:23 eats a crunchy in a demented way.
04:27 Who exactly takes a bite directly out of the middle of a crunchy?
04:32 A monster, I tell you.
04:35 But this student comes up to Oliver and says "Oh, there's a party going on tonight, NFI,
04:41 not fucking invited."
04:43 Almost as if the solidarity between them is simply the fact that no one wants to speak
04:48 with them.
04:49 But in many of these early scenes, just tantalising the outer grasp is Felix.
04:54 Oliver looks out of his window, there's Felix.
04:56 In an early establishment shot of the library, there's Felix on the edge of the frame.
05:01 Felix seems to be everywhere, and that's because he represents everything that Oliver would
05:05 like to be.
05:06 Handsome, charismatic, popular, the kind of person that draws everybody into his orbit,
05:12 but also a passage into a world that Oliver has not been able to access just yet.
05:18 The movie primes us for this with its pre-title sequence, with a montage of Felix as Oliver
05:24 admits that "I loved him", and it establishes Saltburn as being a story of lust for Felix.
05:31 There is a huge vein of homoeroticism, this kind of desire for Felix, that eventually
05:39 manages to manifest when Oliver manages to finally meet up with Felix in a chance encounter
05:45 when his bike breaks down and he swaps over with Oliver to get to his class.
05:51 And so that becomes the instigating interaction between the two that begins their relationship.
05:58 And Jacob Elordi is perfectly cast as Felix.
06:02 I do have to admit that before this, I wasn't really familiar with Elordi because Euphoria
06:06 and The Kissing Booth aren't really aimed at me, so this was a great first impression.
06:12 The Australian actor has a near pitch perfect British accent, which is fantastic for the
06:17 tough boy that he's playing, someone that comes from this very privileged background,
06:22 but also does seem to possess a degree of self-awareness.
06:26 He does seem to have some kind of conscience, which at least puts him a little bit ahead
06:31 of some of the other people in his orbit.
06:34 Elordi has a fantastic presence, but also he's just an inordinately handsome man, and
06:40 the camera absolutely loves him.
06:43 The way that Fennel positions the shot so it just lovingly almost caresses his body,
06:50 just glancing over his musculature.
06:53 There's a moment where in the sweltering heat of summer, as Felix is complaining about the
06:58 fact that there's no air conditioning in the dorm rooms, Oliver can barely notice what
07:04 he's saying as he stares at the topless Felix on the dirty floor, and his mind is
07:10 even filthier.
07:11 You can just see it in Keoghan's performance where he just stares at Felix with his mouth
07:17 slightly agape, almost like a drool of spit is just going to come plopping out of his
07:22 mouth in desire.
07:24 But what you might not necessarily notice on a first viewing, especially given that
07:28 it comes from Oliver's point of view, is that it's very ambiguous, if at all, how
07:32 much Oliver's barely concealed attraction towards Felix is actually reciprocated by
07:37 him.
07:38 I'm not even certain that Felix actually knows about it, or that he's even of that
07:42 orientation.
07:44 We often see Felix using his desirability to pick up women for a quick one night stand,
07:50 and often Oliver is sitting watching on the sidelines with barely concealed jealousy,
07:56 wishing that that was him.
07:58 And so that casts certain elements of the story in doubt, and there are certainly details
08:04 about Saltburn that are meant to be question marks, even by the end of the movie.
08:10 Barry Keoghan has made a name for himself playing misfits, oddballs and thugs, and Oliver
08:14 Quick might be one of his strangest characters yet.
08:18 In the early scenes at Oxford, he's especially gawky, but then when he reaches Saltburn,
08:24 Oliver starts a quite radical transformation.
08:27 As he begins to evolve to his environment, he starts to really change as a character.
08:35 Oliver at times seems quite passive, especially because he's almost unfalteringly polite,
08:40 to an almost grating degree, but you realise at certain moments that's actually somewhat
08:47 affected.
08:48 But there are other moments where that mask seems to slip somewhat, and Oliver is quite
08:54 sharply perceptive, and there's something quite uncertain about his character, and that
09:00 becomes increasingly clear over the course of the movie.
09:03 And Keoghan is one of those actors that is deeply committed.
09:08 You watch Saltburn, and you know that Keoghan is an actor that will follow the material
09:12 whatever it asks of him.
09:14 There are several moments where Keoghan just has to get all of his kit off.
09:19 There are several scenes of full frontal nudity.
09:22 At Saltburn, there are some very strange things of Keoghan, things that other actors might
09:26 have some hesitation about, but Keoghan seemingly does not.
09:30 He doesn't seem to have any kind of squeamishness or shame about the role, he just absolutely
09:36 follows whatever Fanal asks of him, but I do think that Fanal at certain points takes
09:41 things a little bit too far, and at certain junctures, I almost feel like Keoghan is kind
09:47 of left twisting in the wind, especially in one moment later on in the movie.
09:53 Once we do finally reach Saltburn, meet the rest of Fiex's family, a group of self-absorbed
09:58 eccentrics for whom money is literally no object.
10:02 They're so wealthy that they're just bored a lot of the time, and are throwing these
10:06 lavish extravagant parties, largely out of simply having something to do.
10:12 The cast is uniformly excellent, every single one of them gives a great performance, every
10:18 one of them seems very well suited for their roles.
10:21 Rosamund Pike, for example, steals quite a few scenes as the mother Elspeth, who is really
10:28 narcissistic.
10:29 She's the kind of person that's your face is "oh hello darling" and is all charming
10:34 and sweetness, and then immediately the second you leave the room, she's talking about you
10:38 behind your back.
10:39 And there are several moments where Pike is delivered some great one-liners that are just
10:45 absolutely hysterical, especially one moment where she claims, oh just very humbly, "well
10:50 that song wasn't based on me", which got an absolutely enormous laugh in both screenings
10:57 that I attended.
10:58 Pike is brilliant.
11:00 Richard E. Grant is actually somewhat underutilised as the father James.
11:04 His character is just completely spaced out, he seems to be in totally his own world.
11:10 But Grant does secure some laughs, especially when the camera cuts to his character for
11:15 a reaction just for a moment, and Grant knows how to sell that kind of stuff, all kind of
11:20 lovey dialogue like "oh my goodness it's so hot, it's hotter than Barbados, I better
11:27 call up the gardener to check on the hydrangeas", and there's a little gag where he's really
11:32 determined to dress in a suit of armour for the costume party, just very excited about
11:38 it.
11:39 But it's only later on when the film turns darker do I think that Grant starts to become
11:43 really effective.
11:44 There's a scene that I found really knowable where his character makes a discovery and
11:49 he's still in that sense of denial, he's still trying to badly comprehend what is happening
11:55 right in front of him, he just can't process it.
11:59 And I feel like some of Grant's recent performances have crept in some elements of his own off-screen
12:05 loss and that has made them quite poignant, and that moment in Saltburn I actually found
12:11 surprisingly emotionally affecting.
12:14 By far the biggest newcomer in the cast is Alison Oliver, who is actually making her
12:18 film debut with this movie, but you'd never know it because she easily stands with the
12:23 rest of the cast, she's fantastic.
12:26 She plays the sister Venetia, who is very much the temptress of the family.
12:31 She's the one that's always trying to seduce the various friends that Felix brings back
12:35 to Saltburn, and as a result they get kicked out for good because Felix doesn't take too
12:40 kindly to people making with his sister.
12:43 But nevertheless, she enjoys projecting this image of being a sexual being, and that's
12:49 because underneath it all she is a very fragile person, she's very vulnerable.
12:56 She's especially insecure about her own body and appearance, especially because she has
13:01 an eating disorder, which is commented on very bluntly by several characters.
13:06 And so Oliver has to play in various scenes either femme fatale or this very damaged young
13:13 woman, sometimes within the same scene, especially in the power plays that she has with Barry
13:19 Keoghan.
13:20 So there are several key scenes between these two characters, and the final one in particular,
13:26 her final scene in the movie in general, is absolutely fantastic.
13:30 It is a big scene for her, she has this major speech talking about Oliver as a character,
13:37 and it's by far one of the most memorable scenes in the movie.
13:40 I was very impressed with her performance, and even more so when I realised that she
13:45 was actually doing an accent throughout the entire movie, because she is in fact Irish
13:50 in real life.
13:51 I could not tell, but Oliver is really one to look out for on the basis of this movie,
13:57 she is very, very impressive.
14:00 There's also Archie Madekwe, his American cousin Farley, who is living off the estate,
14:04 and as soon as Oliver turns up he sees an immediate threat to himself, and sees him
14:10 as his nemesis, and seeks to get rid of Oliver as quickly as possible, often making sniping
14:16 a size the entire time, and trying to remind him that he doesn't belong here.
14:20 He's a really snarky, conniving little git, the kind of character that you love to hate,
14:26 and Madekwe is really great at playing just this really nasty, underhanded character.
14:33 He's the kind of person that, when on karaoke, encourages Oliver unwittingly to sing in a
14:40 version of Petshop Boys Rent, just to really make everyone exceptionally uncomfortable,
14:47 most of all Oliver.
14:48 Madekwe, who recently appeared in Gran Turismo, when I reviewed that movie I did wonder if
14:54 it was the script's fault that he wasn't very good in that movie, and I think the answer
14:59 is very much clear in Saltburn.
15:01 He is more interesting in any given scene in Saltburn than anything he does in the entirety
15:08 of Gran Turismo, where he played the main character.
15:12 I think it just shows that Madekwe can actually thrive when given the right material.
15:18 Lastly there's Carrie Mulligan as Elsba's friend Pamela, who is staying at Saltburn
15:23 while hiding from a Russian boyfriend that probably wants to have her killed.
15:28 And Mulligan is largely an extended cameo in this movie, it's a thank you for the role
15:33 in Promising Young Woman, but she gets three or four scenes to be quite memorable, especially
15:38 because the central gag with this character is that all the rest of the family desperately
15:43 want her to leave.
15:45 They're all saying to her face "Oh no, stay as long as you like, you're no burden whatsoever",
15:51 but whenever she mentions about moving somewhere else they're on tenterhooks like "Where are
15:55 you going?
15:56 Can you leave immediately?"
15:57 And so you have that kind of unspoken tension running all throughout these scenes where
16:02 Mulligan appears.
16:04 Just this obvious discomfort, especially because the family clearly think that Pamela has taken
16:09 advantage of their kindness just a little bit too much, that she's just kind of outstaying
16:14 her welcome somewhat.
16:15 It's a good example of just how fickle they are here at Saltburn, something that Oliver
16:20 quickly realises.
16:22 It shows the strengths of Fennell as a writer.
16:25 I think that her greatest strength in particular is dialogue.
16:28 It just burns with this kind of biting, acerbic wit.
16:33 I think that the comedy that she writes in the movie is really strong.
16:37 But there's one character I haven't mentioned yet and that's Saltburn itself.
16:42 It looms large over the entire movie.
16:45 Once we arrive there, we very rarely leave it for the rest of the running time and that's
16:50 deliberate because once you get a taste of Saltburn, that wealth, that privilege, you
16:56 don't want anything else.
16:58 Saltburn exists in a world unto itself.
17:01 What happens outside of Saltburn no longer matters.
17:05 And if there is a problem within Saltburn, it very quickly gets swept under the carpet.
17:11 Any guests that fall foul of the rules are unceremoniously exited and are never spoken
17:17 of again.
17:18 They just pretend like there was no problem in the first place.
17:22 Oliver's fixation moves from less about Felix and more into a broader one of Saltburn
17:28 once he arrives there.
17:30 The location exudes this really gothic quality.
17:34 You can see this especially in the cinematography which is one of the ways that Fennell has
17:38 levelled up after promising young women.
17:41 Saltburn has a very strong visual look about it.
17:45 There's a lot of moments that use the natural light blasting in through those massive windows
17:51 and having the stark contrast with the dark rooms.
17:55 There's something quite sinister about Saltburn, especially because it has such a massive sprawling
18:01 layout.
18:02 We see that in the moment where Felix is guiding around Oliver for the very first time while
18:06 he's pointing out dead rallies, dead rallies, dead rallies.
18:10 It feels like a labyrinth, especially those spiral staircases which are often shot directly
18:17 upwards or directly downwards to make them look especially twisting and winding.
18:23 It's a visual cue that the movie is trying to wrong foot you, that Fennell is trying
18:29 to lead you down the wrong path.
18:31 To further reinforce this, there's actually a maze in the garden.
18:35 But it's around the midway point where Saltburn starts to falter.
18:39 I think once the film moves away from Felix being Oliver's central point of attraction
18:44 is where it starts to lose direction.
18:46 It seems a bit aimless and rudderless.
18:49 It starts going down various different avenues but not really committing to anything.
18:54 And a lot of the early energy starts to dissipate.
18:57 And I think Fennell was aware of this because it's around this point that she starts inserting
19:02 in these provocative shock scenes that you might have heard about.
19:06 There are several scenes, quite sexual scenes, that are very much audience button pushers
19:13 in a lot of ways and are quite graphic in several instances to such an extent that I
19:19 can't actually describe them on YouTube.
19:22 I'm just going to have to refer to them as things like the vampire scene or maybe just
19:27 the bathtub scene where we see Keoghan licking the remnants of Felix from out the bottom
19:34 of the bathtub and the plug hole which is just gross.
19:39 Just really, really gross.
19:41 But these scenes didn't really shock me.
19:43 I more just found them a little bit forced.
19:46 You can tell the movie is constructed in a way where these scenes could easily be trimmed
19:50 out or removed entirely without affecting the plot.
19:54 It feels like just cheap shock for its own sake.
19:58 That was what I largely had a problem with these scenes.
20:01 And also, they're very painfully literal.
20:05 Like there's no subtext to these scenes.
20:08 They're literally what they are.
20:10 The vampire scene is literally, do you get it, Oliver is parasitic.
20:16 The worst example of this by far is a scene quite late in the movie and to avoid spoilers,
20:22 we'll call it the dirt scene.
20:24 If you've seen Saltburn, you know exactly which bit I'm referring to.
20:28 And this long take scene seems to go on forever.
20:32 Like we get the idea of what is happening in that moment almost immediately.
20:38 Like there's no subtext there.
20:39 It's just literally text on screen.
20:41 We know exactly what's happening.
20:43 But it keeps going and it keeps going.
20:46 Oh look, he's taking his pants off.
20:49 Can we cut away please?
20:50 We get the point.
20:52 In the last act, the film takes a very sharp dark turn.
20:55 One I don't think it earns.
20:58 Fennell does exactly the same thing here as she did on Promising Young Woman where it
21:02 starts out as two thirds of one movie and then suddenly becomes something completely
21:07 different in the last act.
21:09 In fact, I can tell you exactly what film it suddenly turns into, specifically one 1999
21:15 thriller, I won't directly identify here simply for the sake of spoilers.
21:20 But the thing is, in order to accomplish this, you need to have actually laid the proper
21:25 groundwork for it.
21:27 And Saltburn doesn't do that.
21:30 The characters and the narrative that have been established in the earlier portions of
21:34 the movie don't fit with where the direction of the story suddenly veers them into.
21:40 The movie just keeps throwing twist after twist after twist at the audience.
21:45 The more the movie twists, the more it wraps itself around its own neck.
21:50 And by the ending of the movie, it's just flailing around, struggling for oxygen.
21:56 The movie is in a total nosedive for much of the last half hour, culminating in a completely
22:02 unnecessary jump to 2022 for an epilogue the movie does not need, where it suddenly reveals
22:09 one final big twist that not only completely destroys everything the movie that we've been
22:15 watching had been set up upon, but also is laughably convoluted.
22:21 The movie is so impressed with itself for this big twist at the end of it, but it requires
22:27 the character to suddenly become this comic book supervillain where suddenly he's aware
22:33 of things that he couldn't possibly have known about in advance, making ludicrous plans that
22:38 take years to come to fruition.
22:41 It's at that point that the movie just completely self-destructs before your eyes.
22:46 And as I watched Saltburn disintegrate, I realised that it isn't actually an eat the
22:50 rich movie, at least not in the same sense as those other examples I mentioned earlier
22:55 that clearly want to dismantle the class system.
22:59 I don't think Saltburn actually wants to do that.
23:01 Oh, but it is an eat the rich movie in the sexual sense, literally, but also in consuming
23:07 them figuratively, but it's merely a shuffling of chairs.
23:12 It doesn't actually want to get rid of that system.
23:16 And by the end of it, Saltburn has gone so off-piste that I actually came out of the
23:22 movie so confused that I thought, wait, hang on a minute.
23:27 Does this movie actually want us to feel sorry for the rich people?
23:30 What?
23:31 And I was particularly perplexed by the film's final scene, it's one last button pushing
23:36 moment, a dance number accompanied by a very on the nose Sophie Ellis Baxter track, where
23:42 clearly we're meant to think how audacious it is.
23:45 And I just sat there going, what exactly am I supposed to take from this?
23:50 Am I supposed to feel catharsis or celebration?
23:54 Am I supposed to be cheering this on or am I simply meant to be repulsed by it?
23:59 What exactly is the movie trying to say?
24:02 It was emblematic for me of just how completely confused Saltburn becomes.
24:08 And what does become clear is that Emerald for now doesn't do endings very well.
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24:59 [Music]