Saltburn
Critics have been divided over writer/director Emerald Fennell’s sophomore drama Saltburn, yet late millennial and Gen Z audiences have continually sought out the film. Fennell’s picture has enjoyed repeat viewings and had a superb run in cinemas at a time when attracting new audiences remains critical. So why has this tale of a seemingly working-class outsider, ushered into the wealth of the English upper classes, drawn in the late teens and twenty somethings?
The young adult audiences embracing Saltburn could be looking for something more challenging after being raised in the era of the superhero movie. These allegorical tales of gods in human form are progressively unlikely to ring true with an increasingly fractured global outlook. Often part of an ongoing series, those pictures were universally embraced at the peak of the ‘war on terror’ years, but a culture savvy, information rich generation are looking for something that speaks to them today. Who better than a taciturn civilian with hidden depths, ripe for transference?
Not that the film’s protagonist, Barry Keoghan’s Oliver Quick, is any slouch. His transformation throughout Saltburn from loner scholarship prodigy to bronzed, Machiavellian manipulator sees his brooding malcontent sit well at the head of an impossibly attractive cast. Just as Oliver (or Ollie) is disclosed in layers so is the titular country house revealed by rooms a brace at a time. This episodic and measured efficiency could be a welcome hangover from Fennell’s days as showrunner on Killing Eve and despite coming in at just over two hours, Saltburn is a delightfully slow burn.
Field of Vision
From its opening tracking shot leading through the instantly recognisable streets of Oxford, Saltburn has us follow Ollie as he enters the hallowed halls of the world-famous college. Ollie is at Oxford on a scholarship; he is smart, yet we’re not told how smart until the film’s closing moments. Ridiculed, ostracised, paired up with another odd loner by default, Ollie is not cool (yet), or wealthy (yet), he is the audience looking in at the doors of an age’s old patriarchal institution. Saltburn is a tantalising glimpse into a world many will never experience and like Ollie, we feel we don’t belong.
Fennell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren (No Time to Die, La La Land) chose to present the film in 1.33:1 - Academy Ratio. Shooting on 35mm film, this framing gives the audience the feeling of witnessing something through a crack in the door or as Fennell puts it ‘peeping in.’ Rather than an anachronistic affectation, Fennell uses the device to help draw the audience in, creating a spectator’s intimacy. Has this helped the film strike a chord with a younger generation needing to break into a society that feels closed off and does not speak for them?
Academy Ratio fell out of fashion with the advent of widescreen in the early 1950s, but it has been used more recently by some filmmakers to enhance certain aspects of their projects. Writer/director Andrea Arnold’s social realist drama Fish Tank (2009) is set within same framing, conveying an intimate claustrophobia that places the audience as voyeur to the increasingly unsettling scenes on screen. Whilst Wes Anderson set his colourful caper The Grand Budapest Hotel in an ostensibly antiquated window to a forgotten but beautifully realised world just adjacent to ours.
1.33:1 is reminiscent of watching pre widescreen pictures on television, likely the place millennials and Gen Z viewers had their first film experiences alongside the ever-growing gamut of high end and unscripted tv shows. Ollie’s story stands like a reality show arc taken to its extreme: from mediocrity to infamy by quietly standing on the shoulders of others. That’s not to say Fennell’s film is uncinematic, Saltburn is opulent and picturesque, but its promise of something rotten just beneath the surface, just out of shot, just out of reach, draws the audience into its world.
Misdirection & Nostalgia
Saltburn at first appears as the story of someone gifted but in need of being taken in and cared for by those who have the means but whose intentions appear unclear. Yet as the film progresses into the bowels of the country house and Ollie’s true nature is revealed, it is Ollie who holds the upper hand and will eventually stop at nothing to maintain it. He arrives as kind and humble if a little odd, yet is an increasingly seditious David Copperfield, eventually more akin to Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange (1971) or, as many have already surmised, a modern-day Tom Ripley.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) has Matt Damon as the titular sociopath who covets, kills and then assumes the identity of wealthy socialite Dicky Greenleaf (Jude Law). In Saltburn, kindly, wealthy and popular Felix Catton (Euphoria and Priscilla heartthrob Jacob Elordi) is the object of Ollie’s desire. Both film’s play with the notion of possession and longing, yet with Ripley we are complicit in his deeds and his turmoil. With Ollie we are kept at arm’s length and offered only a glimpse of his manipulations until the film’s final rug pull.
Paramount in these films is the choice to enchant an audience with summer climes and gorgeous settings in which to house their stylishly attractive casts. Minghella’s picture promises a well healed ex-pat life in 50s Europe, full of sunlight, art and sauntering jazz. Fennell plays closer to home with a mid 2000s UK setting and music by Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys and MGMT, creating a yearning for a time Gen Z audiences would have just missed out on and might want to experience vicariously. Nostalgia for a time or styles long passed, even unknown, can be a powerful draw for audiences.
In times of economic or social upheaval, cinema can prosper thanks to widespread accessibility and a relatively low price point compared with other out-of-home activities. In those periods nostalgia often sells as an escape from the world. In the US, the 1970s exemplified turmoil in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate and whilst the decade is synonymous with the revolutionary Hollywood New Wave, many pictures were suffused with older tropes: The Godfather (1972) - 30s gangster movies, Rocky (1976) - the last chance boxer or Star Wars (1977) - Saturday serials.
Then & now
Admist the 2008 financial crisis, UK and Irish audiences embraced escapist cinema. Musical Mamma Mia! was the no.1 film alongside great results for The Dark Knight and Iron Man, the latter two announcing the arrival of the old school but modernised superhero movie. Similarly, Saltburn has nostalgia at its core, yet it also houses the defining qualities of a vampire movie. Fennell has spoken about the notion of the film incorporating the essence of these macabre tales of immortal predators. From its opening gothic titles to Ollie’s looming presence, Saltburn exudes vampire DNA.
At an uncomfortable dinner scene, Felix’s sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) dismisses Ollie ‘I don’t think you’re a spider, you’re a moth. Quiet, harmless, drawn to shiny things, banging up against a window, and begging to get in’. Venetia is so close to unmasking Ollie’s vampiric nature, yet she sees a harmless nothing rather than the bat-like danger at the door. It isn’t until later that Ollie is revealed to be a predator posing as a house pet. The film’s darkly lit sex scenes reinforce this notion of subterfuge, of sex and death, acting as provocative windows into who Ollie really is.
Horror has seen something of a renaissance over the last few years and largely with late teen and twenty something audiences. As a genre, it is often symbolic and can help process and make sense of not just trauma but the world at large. Employing scares to address current social issues is horror’s sweet spot: Get Out (2017), Candyman (2021) - race and privilege; A Quiet Place Part II (2021), M3gan (2023) - future fears, both real world and AI; Midsommar (2019), Smile (2022) - mental health crisis. Given the hectic and divisive nature of modern living, it’s no surprise horror is so popular.
Saltburn is not a horror movie, but it does employ many of the genre’s key facets to engage its audience and spin a funny and ultimately absorbing tale. Resurrecting the recent past and combining it with an alluring cast and these genre motifs, Fennell has created a great British chiller for a new generation of cinemagoers. Is Saltburn a reminder that complacency is a blindness and will ultimately lead to downfall? As with her debut feature Promising Young Woman (2020), Fennell has built a world in which the past can dominate the present, but the future belongs to those who act.
Saltburn released in UK & Irish cinemas from 17 November through Warner Bros. and streams on Amazon Prime from 22 December.
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