Saltburn: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs

Spoilers for the film Saltburn (2023)

I had a great time with Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (2020). So when I heard her follow-up film was going to be “dark academia” themed and would once again look into contemporary issues, (this time about class) I was all in. It’s safe to say I had very high hopes for Saltburn.

Set in Oxford in 2006, we follow struggling scholarship student and wallflower Oliver Quick (Barry Keoughan), who longs to be a part of the posh clique he sees every day. He soon gets the opportunity to introduce himself to the charming Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), and from there, Oliver is taken into this young man’s circle and soon, his life.

Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer in his family’s estate, where we get to meet the eccentric (and star-studded) Catton family. Particularly, the stand out is Elspeth, the matriarch of the household, played by Rosamund Pike, is one of the best highlights of this film.

Sharp comments are made at every turn, and the indulgence is hedonistic. As Oliver sinks into this world, we feel his corruption — it’s the way this movie’s message trying to tell you that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Yet, something feels missing, as it always does when I consume anything “dark academia”. When Oliver enters Saltburn for the first time, there are shots of the marvel of the estate’s grandeur. The cinematography as a whole presents a vibrant decadence — but at the same time, in so much of its beauty and hints of a sinister underbelly, there is a hollowness. It’s perfectly representative of this genre as a whole.

I watched Saltburn coming off reading TikTok’s dark-academia darling Donna Tartt’s A Secret History. It all leads me to think: While yes, it’s all well and good for media and literature to criticise the opulence of these of the “elite class”, at the same time, so many I’ve seen on the internet desire to embody these people that nobody should want to be.

It’s all delicious to witness as a third party, but I’m always hoping no one takes this seriously.

I’m well aware I’m coming very in late onto dark-academia discourse, but considering it’s mid-November and the leaves have only just started to fall, I want to bring this conversation back.

The aestheticisation of the “old money aesthetic” in fashion is making its cyclical return and I, too, have been influenced (there is a white knit cable jumper in my cart as I type this). A lot of this stories in this genre is “pure vibes”, through glorification and romanticisation of times past (even the recent history of 2006) of Eurocentrist upper-class society.

But that’s just it, though — everything is pretty, sure, but everyone feels like a caricature. The “rich” we meet feel surface-level, a quirky set of non-characters who come with shady non-descript histories, blinded by their privilege, intellectual snobbery and elitism. (Though I am told that this truly is how some people behave, people of that level don’t come across my life enough for me to know, fortunately.) And so when they do eventually meet their comeuppance, not only it does not leave you feeling satisfied, you feel a sense of pity towards people who you shouldn’t.

As Oliver is drawn closer in, indulging in all the vices in the Catton family’s estate, his intense obsession with Felix and desperation to infiltrate the impenetrable world of the privileged few grows. He moulds himself to be part of a world that would never welcome them or see them as equal.

Or at least, that’s where you think this was going. Instead, we get an inorganic twist and find out that it was all a part of Oliver’s grand scheme to take over this entire family’s wealth and life. And it works in his favour somehow! The Catton family falls for Oliver’s deceptions and he ends up on top. It feels shocking yes, but out of place and unearned.

Ultimately in these tales, it’s never as smart as it thinks it is. Magnetic for sure, but the themes that the stories want you to ponder about how ugly the world of beauty is, eventually get lost in their satirization and create a psychodrama that feels too outlandish to stem from what we saw in the beginning.

What I will say about this movie though is that I was very entertained by it, and it’s so pretty you can’t look away. I think as a whole, Dark Academia is inherently silly. This is all absurd and for sheer indulgence, style over substance, and 100% Tumblr’s movie of the year.

Saltburn is out now in UK theatres.

Sidenote: Barry Keoghan is great. And Jacob Elordi? Hot.