Barry Keoghan Packs Every Highly Unpleasant Wound
DIRECTED BY EMERALD FENNELL/2023
Don’t say you weren’t warned; “slow burn” is almost right there in the title. Almost. Filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn– her follow up to her award-winning 2020 directorial feature debut Promising Young Woman– is, among other things, a deliberately paced descent into the highlife. Although it’s modern day, there’s an entirely old-world decadence about the realms depicted. It begins at Oxford and then shifts to a private manor called Saltburn. The film stars Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, and Richard E. Grant. Another fair warning: none of these characters are “likeable”. (That seems to matter to a lot of people. Best for them to get out now).
Keoghan has proven himself to be a uniquely subversive and bold actor in all manner of films and other projects, ranging from his unforgettable tragicomic role in The Banshees of Inisherin to managing to not the get lost in the shuffle of Marvel’s Eternals. Rarely, though, has he taken on a lead role as he has with Saltburn. The result is… complicated- not unlike everything else about the world of the film. On one hand, Keoghan imbues his character of tragic university student Oliver Quick with an elusive sympathy commingled with occasional dead-eyed nefariousness.
We, like the other characters in Saltburn, want to believe Oliver’s woe-is-me messed-up backstory, which is slowly doled out over the nearly two-hour running time. But then, what to make of his disturbingly extreme obsessiveness? It’s fair and even correct to cut Oliver the slack of demonstrating a wide-ranging human multifaceted nature- something exceedingly rare in most any storytelling. In this case, however, the weighty languid drag of the movie that he’s in does no great favors.
Though obviously fixated on Felix (Elordi), a lanky devil-may-care heir of the weird-as-hell Saltburn estate, he refuses no opportunity to woo the females occupying the manor. Along the way, there are at least two moments of grotesquerie courtesy of Quick that override one’s overall impression of the film itself. Keoghan is so entirely all in on whatever Fennell’s twisted vision asks of him that it is entirely likely that Saltburn simply couldn’t exist without him.
Honestly though, for most, a world without Saltburn might be preferable. Ninety percent of the dark stoney film lands outwardly as sloggy and/or repulsive. For those inclined to venture beneath the surface of the thing, highly subjective rewards await. There is a reveal, there is a discernible point to it all. Pike and Grant as the lord and lady of the manor are undeniable bright spots on Fennell’s road to Hell. Unfortunately, they are sadly underutilized. “It” fella Elordi is effective as the focus of Quick’s obsession, though his entitled death-wish demeanor puts a calloused thumb on the scale of the already heavy outing.
At night they throw big loud stupid rave-ish happenings. The extremities of the going’s-on at these parties register to the lord and lady as nothing if not ordinary. Tomorrow night, maybe there will be another one. Probably. Changes, though, lurk on the horizon for Saltburn. Will Saltburn bring about changes to its viewers- positive, negative, or otherwise? Again, that’s entirely subjective- more subjective, dare I say, than most films. But in very certain strides, Keoghan absolutely cuts to the quick.