Saltburn and Love Past Death

Review - Matilda Forss

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for the movie Saltburn.

Saltburn’s main character Oliver Quick. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.

Poster for the movie. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.

The muddled “eat the rich” film Saltburn hit the theatres late last year. The film, directed by Emerald Fennell, follows Oliver Quick’s obsession. The subject of that obsession is Felix Catton. Like Oliver, Felix is an Oxford student. Unlike Oliver, he is insanely rich. They meet and become friends, the friendship blossoms and Oliver gets invited to stay at their ancestral home, Saltburn.

Regarding Saltburn’s most controversial scene, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring to write about the importance of Barry Keoghan’s graveyard performance. We may condemn it because it appears grotesque and vulgar, yet the scene is nothing but a young man bawling, groping, groaning, eating, and loving the earth of a grave. He didn’t have to do that. Except that he did. 

The heart doesn’t get what the heart wants

Throughout the film, Oliver is never further than an arm’s length away from Felix. They, by Felix’s command, only have one bathroom separating them. Oliver is close, but Felix still keeps his distance. Tantalising him. And Oliver hates him for it. The carnal love that Oliver has for Felix he accomplishes with everyone, and everything, else other than him.

Is it not natural then that he only gets to love him, literally “past the grave”? Theirs is a complicated relationship, and heartbroken Oliver can only consummate it with the material ground still between them. Like a parasite, now without a host, he mewls. It was always a matter of infusing yourself into the other person, possessing Felix, becoming Felix, that was the appeal for Oliver. At the graveyard he is for the first and last time claiming Felix as his own. He worships him, through an act of love and hate, mixed equally.

Improvisation

The graveyard starts with Oliver kneeling at Felix’s grave. All that is left of his former obsession is now earth. He undresses and mourns. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.

The graveyard scene is the result of spontaneous creation according to the director, i.e. it was unscripted. The scene is described by Fennell as an experience of grief and despair. A display of true emotion. She disclosed that they shut down the shoot, except for the few people necessary to keep the camera rolling, and that Fennell gave Keoghan suggestions for how to do the scene. As Keoghan told Entertainment Weekly, he was instantly on board:

“For me, it wasn't about fecking the grave, it was more about I don't know what to do with this obsession; it’s making me confused and making me unhuman in a way […] it was a total discovery for him, I think. And it was sad. It was very, very sad.”

The long, still, raw shot of unperturbed sadness, despair and lust is a sharp contrast to the cold lunch the family is seen having after Felix’s body has been found. Sitting with your feelings of empathy, hate, disgust, or whatever your feelings may be, that, Fennell admitted, is the point. She also commented on Keoghan’s acting that:

“There’s no way I could see a performance of that dedication — an expression of grief and love as intense as that — and not show it.”

The mist produces first the mourning family, and seconds later the haunting presence of Oliver. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.

That strange thing called grief

The hymn “Lord of all Hopefulness”, common for both weddings and funerals, is sung at Felix’s funeral. The casket is buried and Oliver stays alone by the new grave. We hear the choir sing the line “be there at our homing” and as he lies down, having taken off his shirt, “whose presence is balm”. The choir ends and he begins to remove his pants. The worship is over, and Oliver tries to do what he always wanted to do with Felix – control him, have him, love him. Thus, in the graveyard, when the music stops, we are left with nothing but the sound of Oliver’s crying and the act he proceeds to fulfil. Mourning by the grave, he is filled with remorse, having killed the man who was his first real friend. While it is easy to paint everything as equally wicked, there is one Oliver before the death of Felix, before the graveyard scene, and there is another after.

Lying
The point of no return in Saltburn is the moment when Felix tries to reunite Oliver with his addicted mother. We realise that Oliver and Felix’s relationship is all based on lies. His father never really died, his family never had any problems with addiction, and he isn’t nearly as poor or disadvantaged as he makes himself out to be. He has done it all to gain on Felix’s pity. Even their meet cute was a planted seed.

Oliver’s “addicted” mother and his “dead” father. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.

“Rags” to riches
Oliver yearns for a life of culture, money, and status. His relationship with Felix is therefore very fragile, based on this unbalanced power dynamic. Like so, nothing is ever quite direct. Even when Felix tries to dismiss Oliver, becoming bored with him, he can’t properly tell him off. We learn that there is a difference between love and lust, money and money, loving and whatever-it-is-Oliver-feels-for-Felix. Class difference is in the code of conduct at Saltburn, and it is all the material things that stand in between Oliver and Felix’s love. To achieve the things he wants, Oliver grasps onto the only things he knows can grant him power – words and lust.

Sir James Catton, Felix’s father. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb

Felix’s father, who by the end bribes this lingering phantom of a man out of his own house, seems like the only person not allured by Oliver. Perhaps that is because his whole personality revels in the vanity which the others think they keep in check, though Oliver notices it in them all. All the words that rich people do not say, all the emotions they skip, the actions one doesn’t talk about – these are exactly the things that Oliver says, pauses on, and talks about. Oliver always finds a way to press where it hurts. If not directly then indirectly, such as in his relationship to Felix’s mother, Elspeth, who he deceives into thinking nobody but him truly understands.

Seeing Felix’s complicated parents we are left to wonder what kind of a family this is. They are arrogant, high-handed, masterful bullies. They are by no means innocent. TV critic Roxana Hadadi, writing for Vulture asked us to question what is worse:

“Someone like Felix, for only providing charity to caricatures of the unfortunate (note how Oliver’s name is nearly Dickensian), or Oliver, who smears his perfectly acceptable life (nice house, nice parents) to strive higher”?

To say which is worse, answering Hadadi’s question, I think says more about you the viewer than the motivation behind either Oliver or Felix’s actions. While the origin of their obsessions with each other is their unlevel playing field, we see how the relationship also moves past that. A lust and yearning to indefinitely infiltrate, mixed with awe-inspired worship, is Oliver’s driving force – and it lands him face down, in the dirt, grieving how impossible true connection with Felix always was.

Felix’s family in mourning as seen by Oliver from the other side of the lake. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures / Photo: IMDb.