What do you do when you agree with many of the criticisms about something, a book or film, for example, but still enjoy that something? The answer is obvious -- just enjoy the book or film for what it is. I had that experience watching Saltburn the other day, a film I wound up liking more than I thought I would.
If, broadly speaking, the film is a mix between a country house story like Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, it's the country house part that works well and glides along smoothly and the Ripley part that is somewhat clunky. By the time I saw the film, I was clued in that Oliver, the Barry Keoghan character, is manipulative and somewhat monstrous, but that he isn't who he seems to be is without question, as others have pointed out, not at all hard to predict. You may not predict just how far he'll go in his actions and act out on his sexual frustrations, but I can see why writer and director Emerald Fennell has downplayed the Ripley connections. Saltburn is hardly a thriller. And there are no points weaker in the film than its scenes toward the end sort of laying out the final revelations of the plot. Seeing all the pieces of a puzzle laid out rather clumsily when no laying out of the puzzle is needed makes the final few minutes, till perhaps the final scene, feel perfunctory. Over explaining is never good, and this goes double for over explaining what's easy for the audience to put together. But in Saltburn the fun is had in the getting there. It's the journey that gives pleasure here, not so much the foreordained destination.
I love country house stories and none more than Brideshead Revisted, both the novel and the old British TV miniseries adaptation. Saltburn clearly hearkens back to Waugh's great book in its overall structure. Oliver is invited to the family country estate as Charles Ryder in Brideshead is invited to Brideshead by aristocratic Sebastian Flyte. The object of Oliver's fascination, Felix, has a vulnerable sister, Venetia, just like Sebastian does in Julia. The parents of Felix and his sister figure prominently as Sebastian and Julia's parents do. But is Saltburn a satire of Brideshead and country house stories of its ilk? That's the stange thing. Saltburn isn't incisive enough in any way to work well as true satire. As others have said, it does come across as a hollow film in some ways. It gives you this look at class and desire and frustration and covetousness without really saying much about them all that interesting. People can be rich and idle and interesting, and have depth, as, say, in Brideshead, but in Saltburn, they are purposely made flat, one-dimensional. But as performed by everyone, Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant and Carey Mulligan in particular, they are very amusing. This is indeed a sort of pulp fantasy version of a country house story, with some Gothic touches. The movie, up until all the clumsy exposition, is a lark.
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