Riddled with graphic sensuality and violence, Saltburn left a serious mark on the 2023 film
scene to its very last frame. This is the truth about Saltburn's shocking conclusion,
and beware, there are spoilers ahead! Saltburn opens in what appears
to be roughly the present day, with Oliver Quick reflecting on his relationship
with Felix Catton. The film then flashes back to when the two first met at Oxford in 2006.
Like most students at the university, Felix comes from wealth, whereas Oliver is
one of the few students there on scholarship. Supposedly Oliver's alcoholic father has
passed away and Oliver has no interest in coming home to his drug-addicted
mother. Feeling bad for his new friend, Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer
at Saltburn, his family's lavish estate. At Saltburn, Oliver is introduced to Felix's
family: his absent-minded father Sir James, his snobby mother Elspeth, and his depressed and
bulimic sister Venetia. Also living at Saltburn is Felix's cousin, Farleigh Start. Farleigh is
a biracial American who's desperate to cling to his British family's status and already has an
antagonistic relationship with Oliver at school. Oliver is obsessed with Felix, and when
Venetia and Farleigh both try to make it clear to him that Felix just sees
him as a temporary "toy" to play with, Oliver responds by messing with
both of them in perverse ways. In the final act of the film, the Catton family
prepares a big birthday bash for Oliver themed around A Midsummer Night's Dream, but Felix
becomes wise to Oliver's manipulations. The morning before the party, Felix takes Oliver
on a surprise visit to Oliver's parents' house. Contrary to Oliver's sob stories, both of his
parents are alive, friendly, middle class, and seemingly not addicts. At the party, Felix is
put off by Oliver's dishonesty and doesn't want to be anywhere near him. Even so, Oliver tracks him
down in Saltburn's labyrinth to declare his love. After the party, Felix's body is found dead
in the labyrinth. Sir James and Elspeth try to act like everything's okay, but Venetia and
Farleigh can't keep up the ridiculous facade. "What? You want me to just sit here
and eat it like nothing's happening?" "What else is there to do, darling?" "Anything!" After the funeral, Oliver essentially has sex with
Felix's grave. Not long after her brother's death, Venetia commits suicide, and while
Elspeth wants to keep Oliver around, Sir James wants to pay their
guest to leave Saltburn. Years pass, and the film brings us back
to the present day. Sir James dies, and an older Oliver reunites with Elspeth. She
welcomes him back to Saltburn with open arms, but sure enough, she falls ill
and ends up on life support. It's revealed that Oliver's opening
narration was being delivered to an incapacitated Elspeth. Oliver confesses that
he killed Felix by poisoning his drink before ripping away Elspeth's life support. With the
whole Catton family destroyed, Saltburn is now in Oliver's possession. He celebrates by doing
cocaine and dancing naked around the building. The premise of Saltburn makes it seem easy
to compare it to the recent wave of dark satires about the haves and have-nots,
such as Parasite or The Menu. However, Saltburn finds material to laugh about in the
eccentric foibles and uncomfortably callous attitudes of the ultra-wealthy Cattons. Its
attitude toward the upper class feels a lot less vicious than other films of this type. The reason
for this is largely because its ultimate villain isn't a rich person or a greater systemic force.
Instead, it's Oliver, a middle-class interloper. Whatever sympathy Oliver might initially engender
as an outsider is lost due to both his twisted actions and lack of psychological relatability.
Viewing Saltburn as a commentary on class, the fact that Oliver lies about being poor
and struggling when he is really just envious of those who have more than he does might
even come across as a reactionary message. Nonetheless, some critics have still described
the film as an "eat the rich'' movie. The logic here is that, even if Oliver comes off as
more sociopathic than his wealthy hosts, people can still find enjoyment in seeing him slowly destroy those silly out-of-touch
Cattons and claim Saltburn for himself. It's important to acknowledge that
Saltburn takes place in England, where issues of class are treated differently
than they are in America. While American capitalism is based on the idea of "the
American dream," where anyone from any background can make it big if they work hard
enough, British class structures are treated with a much more rigid line between casts. This is
particularly visible in institutions like Oxford, where a scholarship student like
Oliver completely sticks out. "I mean, you're almost passing." "For what?" "I don't know?" In that cultural context, it's possible
Brits may feel even greater catharsis seeing Oliver find ways to rise above his
station, regardless of the twisted methods through which he goes about it. In America,
however, stories of people attaining massive amounts of wealth through controversial
methods are both common and popular, so this aspect of the film plays a bit more
basic and less richly satisfying across the pond. Throughout the film, Saltburn acknowledges this
culture clash through the American character of Farleigh. One of the more complex supporting
characters in the film, Farleigh bullies Oliver to assert his connections to privilege within the
British class structure, but Farleigh's position is very much conditional and his hyper-privileged
family still treats him as an outsider. There's no doubt this is
due to his biracial status, for while class hierarchies are slightly
less ingrained in the American psyche, racial hierarchies are fixed in
place on both sides of the Atlantic. While Saltburn invokes a lot of
conversations about social class, the main source of drama in the film
is Oliver's feelings for Felix. In the film's opening narration, Oliver claims he
"loved" Felix but wasn't "in love" with him. Both Oliver and Felix talk of "love"
for each other throughout the film, and at least in Oliver's case, that goes
beyond seeing Felix as good friends and into a clear homoerotic sexual fixation. In the
end, Oliver declares he actually hated Felix, and that his feelings largely drove
him to wreak havoc on the Catton clan. Of course, there's much to debate over
what exactly Oliver considers "love." He comes across as a complete sociopath,
lacking empathy towards others and showing no hesitation about cruelly manipulating
the people around him. For this reason, he may be entirely incapable of
love as it's traditionally defined. Whether or not his feelings can be accurately
called "love," however, he's certainly filled with passion and obsession. In addition to the sexual
attraction he feels for Felix, much of his desire for his friend is rooted in envy. Oliver wants
Felix's social status, wealth, and his effortless ability to charm everyone around him. In the
end, Oliver is able to take all of Felix's former belongings for his own, but gaining his victim's
personal strengths is another matter entirely. With such a psychologically ambiguous protagonist, Saltburn generally aims to shock and intrigue
more than build a deeper connection between the audience and its characters. Even so, there
is one scene towards the end of the film that stands out by letting more genuine
emotion enter the picture. What's more, the sequence also doubles as the film's most
pointed joke about the British upper class. The morning that Felix has been found dead, Sir
James and Elspeth still refuse to let go of their preexisting plans despite their son's death.
Gathered at the dining room table, the parents just want to talk about how great Oliver's
birthday party was while eating meat pies. In contrast, Farleigh and Venetia react
to the death with actual tears. When Farleigh tries to talk about how absurd and
cruel it is to act as if nothing happened, the parents respond with orders to quietly eat his
lunch and not taint the meal with his emotions. "None of us wants your bloody American feelings." The parents represent the stoic attitude
to "keep calm and carry on" to a comically unhealthy extreme. Even outside the specific
cultural context, this scene hits hard due to the universal struggle to pretend
things are normal in the face of tragedy. Given the conscious need to avoid spoilers
about the film's many twists, the cast and crew of Saltburn haven't spoken directly about
the film's ending as of the end of 2023. However, Emerald Fennell has commented on the general
themes of the film, offering some helpful insight into how to process the film's ending in addition
to the topics she doesn't outright comment on. When speaking to Vogue, the filmmaker
avoided answering questions about the way the film addresses racism, sexism, and classism, deeming these political issues secondary
to her actual main focus. She explained, "Really, it's a film about first love.
Generally, because I'm quite facile, I think everything has to do with
sex, and I think our fetishization of the country house and titles
is completely sadomasochistic." She went on to discuss some of the complexities
of humanity that inspired the film, saying, "I'm utterly obsessed with how we relate
to things that we want and desire and also kind of hate and know are unattainable —
things that we know will never love us back, whether that's a person or a house or a
culture. And yet we can't f---ing stop being desperately attracted to
them. My question is, 'Why?'" Imagery from Oliver's climactic A Midsummer
Night's Dream birthday party has been present throughout the marketing for Saltburn, so
while the dramatic events of the party are still spoiler material, the film's crew has been
able to speak about the design elements of the sequence. In the press notes for the film,
production designer Suzie Davies explained, "There were so many design elements
that we wanted to bring to the party, elements that needed to feel like
they'd been in the family for years." Davies went on to explain the choice to
include the fairly out-of-place image of a pig roasting on a spit
at the lavish affair, saying, "And then to contrast that, we talked about having
the slightly grotesque pig on the spit rolling in front of it. It was all about the juxtaposition
of the surreal, the sinister, and the colorful." Costume designer Sophie Canale also
opened up about Oliver's antlered costume, explaining that it came from a desire
to make him look mythical. She also pointed out the contrast between
the intensely jeweled designs of Venetia and Elspeth's costumes against
Felix's lazier Puck costume, saying, "You've got everyone else at the party
in ballgowns, black tie, fancy dress, or trashy dresses. But Felix is
just in his jeans and a vest, and then he's put a pair of wings on and
that's all the effort he's going to make." Speaking in the press notes before the SAG-AFTRA
strike, Archie Madekwe, who played Farleigh in the film, described the dramatic effect
the party has on the story. He observed, "Throughout the film, there's something
of a heightened Shakespearean quality to Saltburn and the Cattons and then
it all comes to life on this night." Another key to understanding Saltburn is
its connections to gothic romance and horror stories. Fennell cited several gothic novels
like Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca as influences in the film's press notes. According to
The Standard, at screenings of the film, she's gone further in describing the movie's
horror as being akin to a vampire flick, saying, "Certainly metaphorically it is a vampire
film. It is about what we do when we're completely besotted with something
or someone. And I hope it's part of the classic Gothic tradition where love
and hate are very, very close together." While discussing some elements of the film's plot
after a screening at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, Fennell went further into how the vampire
metaphor applies to Oliver. According to Deadline, her comments highlighted how Oliver tends to,
quote, "absorb the qualities of life he desires from those around him the way a vampire
sucks a mortal's blood." For their part, the Cattons do the same to other characters in
the film. Possibly the clearest example of this behavior is Elspeth's conflicting treatment of
her troubled friend Pamela throughout the film. "Pamela died?" "Yeah." "She'd do anything for attention." As reported by Gold Derby, Fennell explained her
biggest goal for the film following another awards consideration screening in Los Angeles. Speaking
in a Q&A moderated by Variety's Clayton Davis, she said that she wants each person who
views the film to feel something about it, even if they don't outright
enjoy it. She explained, "Hate it, love it, be turned on, be freaked out
[...] whatever it makes you feel. I want people to feel something. That's the reason you make
a movie and not a TV show or write a book." Speaking with MovieMaker, Fennell elaborated that
the large amount of nudity and sexual scenarios throughout the film were also intended to invoke
an unexpected reaction. She explained that the on-screen nudity is about, quote, "grief or
triumph," as opposed to eroticism. For this reason, the regular sex scenes in the movie
are focused mainly on the actor's faces. while the actual nudity comes at more emotionally
cathartic points of the film such as Oliver's behavior at Felix's grave or his victorious
dancing after he claims Saltburn for his own. Whether Fennell successfully conveyed these
ideas to her audience is up to the viewer, but with some of the most shocking scenes
and imagery to hit the screen this year, Saltburn is sure to bring about a reaction
in just about anyone who puts it on.
