PREMISE
A student at Oxford University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.
THE GOOD STUFF
BARRY KEOGHAN- Though I would not say that this is an interesting character by any means, this is a character that is so wildly unhinged in every facet of his life that it takes a certain actor with zero fear to go to necessary extremes to convey the character in some kind of an honest way. So many elements to this character make no sense that it’s miraculous that Keoghan comes away virtually unscathed here. Not a great performance, but an admirable and very wild one.
VISUALS- I’m hard-pressed to think of a 2023 movie that deserves the Oscar for best cinematography more than SALTBURN. It’s not just the beauty of the Saltburn estate itself that contributes to the visuals. Every shot in this movie looks like a painting damn near, and the film does this brilliant thing involving lighting to convey the moods that are present and that are to come. We’ve seen certain movies try to pull this gimmick before, and certain movies have done it better than this one does. But it’s kind of a hard thing to pull off. Much respect here.
THE BAD STUFF
JACOB ELORDI- Respectfully speaking, I have seen both seasons of euphoria, most recently, I’ve seen Priscilla (for which he plays boyfriend Elvis more than musician Elvis), and now this. I can’t help but to come to the binding resolution that he’s pretty much played the same thing ALL OF THE F****** TIME. In this film, he plays a ridiculously good-looking human being with a lot of money who’s obsessed over with no good reason by every character and is a terrible, horrific, immoral person not worth rooting for.
This may age poorly in me saying this, but I’m going to say it anyway… Aside from movie star looks, I’m having a lot of trouble seeing what makes him such a breakthrough performer as of late. Again, he’s not bad at conveying genuine emotions on screen. There is promise here, but it feels like he’s getting a monster push right now, and he seems to have the benefit of the doubt because of….what exactly? His performance is fine here, but I think it’s safe to say that he more than likely cruised through this role because he’s been playing this same type of guy for years and years.
THE UGLY STUFF
OLIVER- As much as Keoghan deserves credit for playing this character, this character is a complete and utter mess. For the first half of this movie, The intentions and motivations for his character are very clear. There is such a direct correlation with the character of Tom Ripley but more modern, more complicated, and with just as much of a sympathetic kind of arc. One of the three different plot twists that happen during this film are when we meet Oliver’s parents. It’s a wonderful scene, making the character even more mysterious and exciting.
There was a potential for this character to be great simply by examining why his interactions with his parents would want to make him a Tom Ripley-esque type of character. But no. This is not a character study. This is style over substance and, so instead we get…
THIS ULTRA BULL**** 3RD ACT- There’s so much to explain here that would be direct spoilers of course, but I will just say that it is in the third act of this movie in that the storyline becomes something completely different than the first two acts were building up to. This leads to an ending that makes no sense without building up Oliver to be an actual psychic who’s able to predict the precise behaviors and movements of like seven different individual people throughout a couple of years.
Also, it should be emphatically mentioned that there is a scene with Oliver and…. Let’s just say…. a large mound of actual dirt…that is literally LITERALLY one of the most nonsensical and absolutely f****** stupid scenes I’ve ever seen in any movie ever. Absolutely not kidding.Â
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With this movie, I’ve come to kind of an epiphany about the world of the rich when it is portrayed on screen. All the shiny things, beautiful people, idyllic locations, and designer jewelry are a hell of a thing to sell to an audience in a trailer. It is also a hell of a thing to start your movie off with in a way. But in my opinion, everything is so lacking in depth that after about an hour or so of being in the world of the rich, it becomes very repetitive and honestly boring. The shots look exactly the same, the same music is being played, and the grandiose estates in which the story takes place blend together. And in these movies where the world of the rich is portrayed, all the characters are fighting with all of their might to maintain their place in the world while the story is trying to tell the audience that the world itself is worth fighting for even if it is nightmarish and soul consuming.
Damn near all of these kinds of movies portray normal people as losers, and the people who ultimately lose their souls through superficiality and materialism as the real winners because of….. reasons. I find it very telling that this movie has a bunch of characters that tell you that maintaining one’s stature within the nuclear toxicity of the Saltburn estate is worth taking the lives of innocent people… But it never explains why. I thought this was a problem I specifically had with Sophia Coppola’s movies because all of her films take place in this environment, but that is not the case.
It’s available in limited theatrical release.
