A Commentary on Class in Saltburn (2023)
Staff Writer Kuo Yi Quan goes behind the scenes of Saltburn (2023), a twisted black comedy thriller which gained immense controversy in many social media circles.
Saltburn (2023), written and directed by Emerald Fennell, was one of my anticipated releases of last year, as its stunning trailer promised some darkly humorous and scathing class commentary to the effect of Parasite (2019) or more recently, Triangle of Sadness (2022). The movie follows Oliver Quick, a scholarship student struggling to fit in with his peers at Oxford, as he becomes inexplicably drawn to Felix Catton, a rich and popular classmate. Felix invites Oliver to Saltburn (his family estate) for the summer, setting the scene for the events that follow.
Similar to other films engaging with the theme of class struggle, Saltburn uses moments of friction between the rich and working class to derive humour and tension while commenting on the nature of class relations. Personally, one of the more memorable instances of this was the karaoke scene, where in an attempt to humiliate him, Farleigh goads Oliver into singing “Rent” by Pet Shop Boys. Summed up in the lyric “I love you, you pay my rent”, the 80s pop song alludes to a transactional relationship between a kept man and his lover, implying the same of Oliver and Felix’s friendship. Farleigh’s song choice also aligns with the movie’s thematic portrayal of obsession as a conflation of greed and lust.
The movie’s exploration of class struggle is thus further complicated by the ambiguity of homoerotic tension portrayed between the characters. Being heavily inspired by The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) which was adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, Saltburn relies on the unreliable narrator as a device to explore the protagonist’s descent from infatuation to obsession, detailing his downward spiral into violence and crime. The movie begins with Oliver’s narration, where he says about Felix “I loved him. I loved him, but was I in love with him?” These lines frame the rest of the movie’s events as we see their relationship progress through Oliver’s perspective.
Playing on common tropes of upper and working class characters, Felix embodies the outgoing socialite, while Oliver’s working class upbringing renders him awkward and unsociable among his wealthy peers. As their friendship develops, the suggestion of Oliver’s growing infatuation with Felix is hard to miss. Conversely, Felix seems to invite Oliver to the Saltburn estate out of pity when he confesses his parents’ substance abuse and mental health issues, and brings up his father’s sudden passing. This growing, unreturned obsession culminates in the infamous bathtub scene, highlighting Oliver’s uncontrollable desire to be (with) Felix. The enmeshing of physical and material desire adds emotional complexity to its characters, and when packaged as a summer fling, undeniably adds to the film’s allure.
Another draw of the movie is its striking cinematography, complementing its extravagant filming location. Saltburn was filmed primarily in Drayton House, a palatial 14th-century estate located in Northamptonshire. The use of wide shots flaunts the grand stately home, further emphasised by its juxtaposition against the miniscule human figures.
The wide shots persist throughout the film, repeatedly emphasising the extensiveness of the Saltburn estate. Even when Oliver’s presence (comparatively) overwhelms the screen, the grounds seem to stretch out endlessly before his and the viewers’ eyes, perhaps implying the persistence of upper class wealth and its indifference towards the working class individual.
Cinematographer Linus Sandgren also cites the use of 3:4 aspect ratio to give Saltburn the feeling that “we were looking into a dollhouse or an old-school TV and watching the characters inside”, as it most closely resembles a square window. This notion of voyeuristic observation imposes onto viewers a fascination with the lifestyle of the rich, aligning with the film’s glorification of the old money lifestyle.
Saltburn’s embodiment of its old money look was in part due to its intricate set design which offers an intimate view into the lives of the rich while emphasising the underlying generational wealth supporting said lifestyle. The estate’s interior is a mishmash of the antiquated and modern— with marble busts being used as hat holders and a recent portrait of Felix hung up next to a baroque painting. These tiny details are scattered throughout the house, giving Saltburn the “lived-in” feeling.
This act of voyeurism seems to be further encouraged by the film’s tendency to indulge in its still shots, giving viewers ample time to take in the details of the set design and visually intriguing compositions. The fixation on maintaining these intricately assembled tableaux, in turn, holds the viewers at a distance. This obsessive stillness highlights the detachment of Oliver from the extravagant lifestyle of the rich. The Cattons’ lives are on full display, yet still out of reach and opaque to Oliver and the working class viewer.
Yet, Oliver is persistent in his attempts to transgress the class and social boundaries. As his desire for wealth and power grows darker and more perverse, his infractions against established social boundaries extend beyond mere voyeuristic tendencies. In moments of heightened sexual tension between Oliver and the other characters, he ingests their bodily fluids— undoubtedly an attempt to evoke the notion of the abject. By conflating defilement and desire, repulsion and perversion, Oliver’s sexual misdemeanours symbolise the taboo nature of lust and greed and represent his overwhelming desire to transgress the literal boundaries between bodies, social classes, and identities.
Thus, Saltburn’s depiction of Oliver’s relationships with the other characters makes for potentially compelling depictions of obsession and class tensions, while its cinematography and set design seem to encourage its protagonist’s voyeuristic idealisation of the old money lifestyle. However, the movie’s painstaking efforts in depicting class divide and psychological tensions between its characters are ultimately let down by its preoccupation with shock value and inability to arrive at a decisive stance about its involvement in the class struggle.
In an odd and contrived plot twist within the final 20 minutes of the film, it is revealed to the audience that its entire sequence of events, starting from Oliver’s chance encounter with Felix at Oxford, had been orchestrated by Oliver in an elaborate plan to infiltrate Saltburn and murder its inhabitants to inherit their wealth. Fennell abruptly pumps the brakes on the satire, turning instead to villainise its central character for a hastily and unconvincingly attributed flaw; Oliver’s transgressions are not borne of his irrepressible desire- which viewers had been led to believe- but rather from an absurd, unadulterated hatred for the rich. Despite aiming to be subversive and shocking, Saltburn instead paints a half-hearted, contradictory attempt at social commentary which ends up being simultaneously underwhelming for viewers who would have already recognised Oliver’s deceitful nature and disappointing for those who were expecting a scathing, cathartic satire (à la The White Lotus).
Staying true to its preference for style over substance, Saltburn’s penultimate scene features Oliver dancing naked through the hallways of Saltburn to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s disco hit “Murder on the Dancefloor”. This forces the audience, for the final time, to confront the spectacle the movie has made of the working class, as well as its viewers. The sight of Barry Keoghan’s bare ass became a crude, taunting reminder of everything the film could have been, and undoubtedly left me with a bad taste in my mouth.