Saltburn
Directed by: Emerald Fennell
Written by: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant
Original Release: 2023
Available on: Amazon Prime
I watched Saltburn with my mother on Amazon Prime—rather, she nagged me into watching it. Since one should always obey a parent’s urging, I agreed to join her in front of the telly. My considered opinion? I hated the film. I see that it runs for 131 minutes. It seemed, watching it, to take the better part of four hours. I was delighted when we got halfway through and had to pause for my Greek lesson with Dr Gabb. Up to that point, I had at least managed to compel some vague interest in where the story might be going. After that, however, it was almost impossible to maintain even a flimsy investment in the film.
Barry Keoghan, as the lead, was too old for the part—much too old. I never believed for a second that he was a university student. The rest of the cast did little to improve matters. There was no one there, of either sex, I found even passing fanciable, which made the allure of the aristocratic world wholly unconvincing. The film wanted to be seductive and dangerous, but I found it lifeless and uninvolving.
There is a twist at the end. I suppose my duty as a critic is to avoid saying what it is. I will say, though, that if I didn’t see it coming, that is not because I failed to pay sufficient attention to what came before. I didn’t see it coming because there was no evidence for it before it happened. It required a conspiracy where so many elements had to be left to chance that no one with half a brain would have conceived it, let alone pulled it off. It felt like the production team had simply run out of ideas and bolted it onto the end to force a conclusion.
As for the plot itself, Saltburn is a dirty mix of Brideshead Revisited and Gormenghast. Like most dirty mixes, it is inferior to its ingredients. The film fails to make the aristocratic lifestyle either glamorous or enjoyable, or even something an outsider might wish to preserve. It is all decay and vague excess, as if it were directed by someone who finds wealth distasteful but still wants to fetishise it. The Gormenghast echoes—showing what happens when an outsider from the humble classes disrupts an established order—are handled more competently, but there is no resolution through the reestablishment of that order. Everything simply falls apart, leaving nothing of value in its place. That might have been the intention. But, I say again, the twist at the end is too forced to be satisfying.
Visually, the film does at least make an effort. The sets are lavish; the cinematography has the studied elegance of something trying to be Barry Lyndon for the Instagram generation. But aesthetics alone do not make a film compelling. For that, we need characters worth caring about and a plot that rewards attention rather than punishing it.
Ultimately, Saltburn is a film that wants to be provocative but ends up being tiresome. It lacks the wit and charm of Brideshead Revisited and the Gothic weight of Gormenghast. It substitutes indulgence for depth and shock for genuine narrative craftsmanship. I left it feeling nothing at all—except relief that it was over. My hour of Homer with Dr Gabb was vastly more rewarding.
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