What is the hidden meaning of 'Saltburn'?

In one of the most flourishing periods of 20th-century Britain, marking the end of Margaret Thatcher's austerity politics, a movement called Cool Britannia emerged. From that point onward, it defined the style and musical culture across the Channel until the mid-2000s without class distinction. While the renewed social optimism led artists like Oasis, who had little aristocracy about them, to become the new voice of the generation, it was during those years that one of the songs was written, illustrating how this social evolution would eventually implode upon itself. Common People by Pulp depicted a bored young student from the British aristocracy who wanted to live like common people, immersing herself in their reality—depressing yet fascinating at the same time—solely to find peace with her own conscience. Focusing solely on the words Jarvis Cocker composed in 1995, we can concurrently find the essence of one of the most interesting films of 2023, Saltburn, the second work of director and actress Emerald Fennell.

The Pulp song (also mentioned in the narrative) becomes a manifesto for those wanting to escape their class by seeking refuge in another. It describes how a young English middle-class boy does not want to live like common people but rather in the British aristocracy. Emerald Fennell raises questions about this dilemma: if the person considered inferior in social class became the one to destroy your existence, would you still have pity for their condition? Oliver Quick, brilliantly portrayed by Barry Keoghan, acts like a Generation Z Mr. Ripley, skillfully disguising his multiple identities to attract the attention of the brilliant Felix (Jacob Elordi), scion of the Cutton house with its burdens and honors. In the golden prison of Oxford, where every student seems to inherit disproportionate wealth and power, Oliver seems to casually draw Felix's attention, more for his apparent shortcomings than for real charm. Unconsciously binding himself to Felix, he will extract secrets and power, revealing increasingly hidden sides, even to the viewer. Like the protagonist of Common People, Felix sees in Oliver a discarded toy with whom he can have a new and authentic interaction, understanding a social status that does not belong to him until he is attracted by something new. However, what Oliver builds over time is a trap that will lead him through the entrance door of British noble power until he becomes its sole possessor.

For Oliver, Saltburn is not just the palace of the Cutton family, it's a mental state, an emancipation from a normal life, and a movement towards something artificially new and truly satisfying—the establishment of a new power. Despite his original family not being as tragic as Oliver wants to show, his ambition drives him to perpetually construct a new image of himself to obtain the privilege of being admired by Felix and subsequently steal his identity and social status.

Compared to Tom Ripley, who almost accidentally comes into contact with the Greenleaf family with the task of bringing home their scion Dickie, whom Ripley is assumed to be classmates with, Oliver structures each action following an increasingly detailed script. Initially attracting Felix into his arms and even communicating with every member of the Catton family exactly what he would like to hear—from the father Sir James (Richard E. Grant), trapped in archaic aristocratic systems, to Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), lost in wine and her English black humor, including Felix's bulimic sister, Venetia (a vulnerable yet ruthless Allison Oliver). The only people he cannot attract to his side are the custodian of Saltburn (a skeptical Paul Rhys) and Felix's American cousin, Farleigh Start, both in desperate search of a sense of belonging. Money is everything and nothing at Saltburn, but all the people are clinging to an identity without which they cannot afford to live.

While the narrative follows a fairly precise template, immersing us in Oliver's system of attraction and manipulation, it is the irreverent aesthetics of the staging, the musical and stylistic configuration of the images that are Emerald Fennell's true trump cards. Saltburn is a pop film, in the conception that Andy Warhol himself had regarding how society lost the uniqueness contained in objects, binding exclusively to profit. Fennell shows the identity crisis of the British aristocracy through the eyes of an apparently awkward boy who fights in the context of a new class struggle. The music not only adeptly frames the specific historical period in which the narrative unfolds, marking the end and crisis of Britpop as a result of the identity conclusion of Cool Britannia itself, but also perfectly contrasts with Anthony Willis' original composition, setting the moments as a court drama in full Barry Lyndon style.

Summer baths under the notes of MGMT, beautiful defined bodies under atypical English warmth, the social conflict between Oliver and cousin Farleight resonating to the notes of Rent by Pet Shop Boy defines an image that even the music supervisor Kirstene Lane defines as the true key to understanding the film. A generational music that destroys a system always idolized, culminating in Oliver's final dance where, literally shedding his previous life, he finally feels free under the notes of Murder On The Dancefloor. The palace of Saltburn echoes with its shuddering, with what it hides within, where power and desire feast together, masterfully amplified by the work of Oscar-winning sound designer Nina Hartstone: "all that oozing, choking, and sucking empowerment that make every scene disturbingly horrible so vibrantly intimate ." Emerald Fennell conceives a film that, as she defines it, is intensely dangerous—a relationship on noble society between power and atonement. Who better than her could conceive it after portraying Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown, the perfect archetype of a nobody's daughter who became a Queen Consort?