Has anyone seen Saltburn? (warning - spoilers!)

[thelostfreak]

I saw Saltburn last night and really enjoyed some of the well-written and subtle nuances conveyed around the behaviours and habits of the upper classes especially concerning inclusion/exclusion of others and the rules of engaging in those circles.

I think the story Saltburn tells is quite a common experience for many university-educated people albeit to a lesser or greater extent (being clever and socially mobile enough to be educated alongside the privileged, and to see their world, but not rich, connected, unstable or old money enough to be entirely let in.)

What I find unfortunate in stories like this (The Talented Mr Ripley et al) is that the writer feels the story is not compelling enough without making the "working class" character into a psychopathic con man who kills everyone at the end.

The real complexity of being a "working to middle class" person given a peek/included in an "upper class/old money" world, is that you are generally quite grounded and psychologically stable compared to those you are surrounded by. It's the struggle of being true to yourself in these scenarios which is the story I wish someone would tell.

Does anyone feel the same?

(I put class references in inverted commas as I believe everybody defines class differently and don't want to be prescriptive or presume I see class in the way that you do)

I keep meaning to watch it. A friend of mine from way back is in it and enjoying a career revival. Has a habit of being in horror stuff so I have missed turns as Dracula and serial killers etc. 😂

There’s a thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4968559-saltburn?reply=131790853

The film was great fun - although where you found subtlety in it is a mystery! Surely the hilariously sledgehammer approach was the entire aesthetic point?

Ooh, is he the creepy butler, @ActuallyChristmas?

YANBU, @thelostfreak. I watched about a third of Saltburn for the lush cinematography and Jacob Elordi's perfect realisation of easy, upper-class charm, then gave up as I was getting increasingly annoyed by the obvious formula.

In Ripley, Gatsby et al, the outsider actively brings something to the top table - he reels the glitterati in, using their own weaknesses. In Saltburn, he's just one in the family's string of lame house pets - and his resentment's too clear from the start.

I love Richard E Grant's "scatty Dad" act 😂

I thought Richard e grant was brilliant as well

But he does reel them in with their own weaknesses. Prime example of the Rosamunde Pike character --first he tries to flirt with her and finds it totally unsuccessful. He is successful when he takes another tack, which plays into how she wants to see herself. Similarly plays into the sister's issues with her body. He is testing them for their weaknesses, then exploits them.

I liked the creepy butler. He was also played a creepy serial killer in a couple of episodes of Luther.

Yes 👍🏼

Saw it, a surprising film, interesting point you make OP.

Agree about Richard E Grant, probably his second best performance ever after Withnail and I.

I loved the switch of traditional female roles being taken by the 2 main male characters

Richard E Grant just gets better and better. He doesn’t even need to speak. He’s a wonderful actor, I love him.

Rosamund Pike is great, too.

I really enjoyed everything but the very end. I don’t know if everything needed explaining as plainly as it was.

I haven't seen Saltburn, but no, I wouldn’t agree that a working class person given access to an upper-class world is necessarily any more sane and grounded than the UC people they are meeting. Privilege doesn’t necessarily engender psychologically unhealthy habits of mind.

This film is just awful. Nothing redeeming about it at all

Not even the house?!

I enjoyed it. A cross between Brideshead and Kind Hearts and Coronets.

I think Emereld Fennell loves this location and idea so much that she may have gone off kilter a bit as the director.
She's in love with her actors but I felt the film was a bit more repulsive than substantial. It didn't have the weight of Ripley or the incredible capturing of first love and nostalgia that Brideshead summoned up for me. A bit too gross-out to be moving.
But that's just my subjective opinion. Each to their own and nice to see a successful female director.

I thought the gross scenes conveyed intimacy really well. Better than the typical fit looking couple/ gasping woman on top/ backdrop of a window crap.

Not what I was expecting but cross with the weak end.

I think without the two scenes which were there purely for shock value then it wouldn't have received the hype it did. Oliver wasn't charismatic and Felix's only interest in him was his background of living in poverty and wanting to 'save' him but how did Oliver know that. If he engineered it from the very beginning with the flat tyre, how was he to know that Felix was a decent enough person to have wanted to bring him into his social circle on the back of it. How was he to know that Felix would recognize the round in the pub was very expensive (I don't believe that would register AT ALL with someone as upperclass as Felix who surrounds himself with the rich). And if Oliver had somehow figured out that this was the way to worm himself into Felix's world then why had he lived as an outcast for his 18 years prior when he instinctively knew exactly what to do to get people to do what he wanted.

@Happinessischeeseontoast he probably didn’t. If the paying for a round thing hadn’t of worked he’d have tried something else or tried again in a few months when they were better friends. He did have the money to pay in his wallet.

I guess he saw Felix and that was plan A. He may well have had a plan B when a different opportunity presented itself.

If you've seen Saltburn this is very funny.

Don't bother if you've not seen it though because the humour won't connect if you haven't seen it because it all relates to the plot AND it contains so many spoilers it would ruin watching it as well.

https://www.tiktok.com/discover/saltburn-review-by-northern-man

They need to do another film based round the parents. Maybe a prequel?

Those two were the best bit about it. I liked Barry Keogh's performance too but there lots of holes in the plot which were annoying. There was actually zero backstory for Oliver. No motive for him doing that and are we supposed to believe there was a grand plan when all of the deaths kind of only happened by chance. I don't even buy that Oliver would have inherited the estate why the dad's sister and Farleigh were still alive. Anyway, I suspect Oxford University are seriously pissed off that their efforts to rebrand as inclusive have been undone by the film 😄

But he does use Theo's weakness – it's his fascination with finding and playing with a new working-class pet every summer. Someone (the sister?) actually says something about 'last year's one' in this context.
I think Theo also gets off, early on, on 'helping' the poor working-class guy out e.g. in the pub scene.

@mewkins

No motive for him doing that and are we supposed to believe there was a grand plan when all of the deaths kind of only happened by chance. I don't even buy that Oliver would have inherited the estate why the dad's sister and Farleigh were still alive

I think some of the motive was a step at a time -like when Farleigh told him he would always be back but this was Olivers one summer, I think it provoked him.

The massive weakness of the whole thing was the presentation of him as manipulative when in fact most of it was just lucky or very weak.

Puncturing the tyre - it was just so daft because if it was a slow leak, its possible Felix would have got there in time or would just abandon the bike lock it up and walk the rest of the way - I mean Oxford isn't exactly crossing the Sahara dessert. If it was a full on fast leak, it would have been deflated by the time he got there. Plus I don't believe given Felix's character, he would have cared about being late and missing a tutorial or whatever he was going to. So it wasn't some marvellous scheme of manipulation - it was far more likely to fail.

The poisoning of Felix just didn't ring true at all. He was obsessed with him so would have tried other ways to wheedle back in rather than kill him. There's no way they wouldn't have had a post mortem and the girl India would have placed Oliver at the scene.

I wasn't at all clear whether Sir James Catton was supposed to have killed himself too because the wife said in the coffee shop 'I'm surprised it took him so long' - did that mean 'to die of grief' or 'to kill himself'? wasn't clear. If I can be arsed I might stop it on the obituary shot and see if you can read any of it in any detail!

The death of the wife was utterly ridiculous. No motive for him doing that and are we supposed to believe there was a grand plan when all of the deaths kind of only happened by chance. I don't even buy that Oliver would have inherited the estate why the dad's sister and Farleigh were still aliveWhat was he supposed to have done to her to give her some degenerative illness to need caring for? like you can just do that unnoticed in a house full of staff. And the whipping out of the breathing tube - there is no way that wouldn't cause injury, he wouldn't be able to get it back in, and there's no plausible explanation for that. How was he supposed to have found out where she was in that coffee shop as well?

And as you said, estates like that are usually entailed. There is NO WAY that the next in line male heir wouldn't be on the first fucking flight from Australia to claim their big country pile.

So much ridiculousness.

His best route in to get the house would be to kill Felix, shag the sister some more ,make her fall in love with him (she was kind of on the way before it all went wrong), marry her, get her pregnant until they had a boy and a spare and then kill her.