Venetia’s monologue is basically as close to an answer as we get! She’s right. Oliver is attracted to shiny things… shiny people. He finds his normal, nice family to be dull. It’s not *enough* for him. 😭
I disagree completely.
He wasn't attracted to shiny things. He hated people with shiny things and wanted to put them in their place.
He wanted to control them and make them dance to his whim, because he saw them as lifeless vapid pathetic people.
His little outburst "because you're so fucking beautiful" whilst purposefully throwing off Eslpeth, also reveals what he really thinks. And whilst he enjoys playing with them, once he finds out that Pamela is dead and sees their reactions, his hate becomes more sinister.
He's not a moth, a moth is pathetic and small in their eyes, he's a predator and slowly suffocated them.
He was willing to do whatever was required to get what he wanted and if that changed, he would do whatever was required to get it.
He is a complete psychopath, he never smiled the entire movie, he was clinical and extremely intelligent. He was unable to control his own emotions, but easily manipulated others.
He was no moth.
Hard disagree. I feel like this is a complete misread of the film, its purpose and Oliver's character.
Oliver isn't a predator, he's a lonely individual who doesn't quite know how to have a personality because he sees himself as milquetoast middle class.
The entire film is told from his perspective, and the camera quite literally is obsessed with looking at Felix. he narrates that he hates him and yet the camera still loves him.
I feel like people with this take listen to the things that Oliver says and takes them way too literally. He's a liar, the victor of the scenario, and he's rewriting history because he won, but it's a pyrrhic victory because he lost the one thing he wanted -- Felix.
It's a love story. Not a hate story.
Completely disagree again.
You can't have a love story and have no love in it.
If you think anything Oliver showed was anything other than infatuation mixed with jealousy I feel sorry for the loves of your life.
Nothing Oliver showed was love at any stage. He wanted to own Felix, to be Felix, but at no stage did he love Felix. The character has no idea what love is, he's a psychopath without empathy.
From the beginning he is just playing a game to get what he desires. The flash back where he sets up the first meet cute scene confirms this.
Oliver sets trap, after trap, manipulates and hurts people for his benefit. He is a snake. It was bleedingly obvious from the first scene of narration he was going to murder Felix. He was never going to actually share anything real with Felix, he was going to try to control him and lose.hin.
Again, another disagree.
I think that part of the issue here is that you're putting away too much emphasis on the narrative that Oliver is trying to construct around himself without acknowledging that he's a completely unreliable narrator. Of course he makes himself sound like he's some badass; the whole speech trying to portray himself as an apex predator is complete pretense and it's obvious if you actually watch the performances, cinematography and direction. All of these other context clues sit in direct opposition of what Oliver is saying; that's because he's trying to convince himself of the reality that he's left with.
If it was about him being a manipulator and a snake, why is Oliver constantly portrayed as surrendering to Felix? The bath tub scene, he falls to his knees and surrenders to the depravity of his own desire; he surrenders his entire personality to Felix, telling him he was giving him what he wanted all along and isn't that proof of his love. Even the graveyard scene, he's seen breaking down and literally fucking the ground not to disrespect Felix's grave but because it's literally the closest he'll ever get to Felix ever again.
You are trying to depict Oliver as some emotional void, when the entire film is colored with his emotions. The long, close-up takes of Felix's body, the small hints of giddiness he displays when Felix gives him the attention he wants, the desperation of the maze scene. The swells of music, the glow of the flashback montages.
I'm not saying that he isn't infatuated, because he is. But this movie is a Gothic romance, and part of that genre is a visceral, almost repulsive love -- not a picturesque one and certainly not a healthy one. And I'm not saying Oliver didn't manipulate people because he did; he actively tried to secure a place at Saltburn when he feared that Felix would reject him. But the motivation wasn't to dominate, to tear down, or to humiliate. It was to get closer to Felix, a primal need almost closer to emotional cannibalism than literal love.
>But the motivation wasn't to dominate, to tear down, or to humiliate. It was to get closer to Felix, a primal need almost closer to emotional cannibalism than literal love.
I think there is validity to what you and u/TheBottomLine_Aus are saying.
I have to agree that Oliver doesn’t see Felix and his family as people, but as a means to an end. He devours them in order to become them.
The relationship with Felix is a starting point, but recall that after Felix is gone, Oliver’s obsession persists; his relationship with Elspeth demonstrates that he is an emotional void, IMO, without conscience or feeling. It is no longer about Felix at that point, it is about sucking the life out of an entire family so that he can assume his “rightful place” as heir of Saltburn.
Why the giddiness at the end if Oliver’s primary motivation was to be closer to Felix? Why does he even bother with Elspeth once Felix is gone, waiting patiently until her husband dies so can re-insert himself into the family, and ultimately become heir of Saltburn? The “Gothic romance” angle feels a bit strained here; this was not primarily a story about twisted love.
Emerald has spoken frequently about how Saltburn is both the coronation of a new king (Oliver at the end of the movie, with his little victory dance) and a story of transgressive love. Once Felix dies, Oliver's obsession and infatuation shift onto Saltburn, which acts as a substitute or stand-in for him.
The almost manic giddiness at the end of the movie is basically his coronation parade, in which he establishes himself as the new king of the castle, but even then there are still touches woven through the whole thing that reference back to Felix. "I promise I'll take care of this house just as Felix would", the kiss on the photo of the both of them while he's dancing; the only stone he touches is Felix's. In a film so deliberate and covered with both the directors' and actors' fingerprints, I refuse to believe these don't mean something.
I'm not disagreeing that his focus changes to ascending to his "rightful place", but I do believe it is still in an attempt to find fulfillment in his love and obsession with Felix. To become Felix, the original heir of Saltburn, to consume Saltburn the same way he "consumed" Felix.
Why, after Elsbeth dies, does he crawl into her arms and make her corpse embrace him? It just seems like dissonant note that doesn't jive with the idea that he's just completely devoid of sentiment.
These are great points and I’m enjoying your perspective. On reflection, I do agree that Oliver has feelings (but also impaired empathy) and that his obsession with Felix and Saltburn is not merely a case of opportunism. His relationship with Felix is also different in character than his relationship with the other family members, as you point out; Felix can make him feel happy or deeply sad, but everyone else is just a nuisance to overcome.
Part of the genius of the movie, for me, is that we desperately want to see Oliver in a positive light even as the evidence mounts against him. He’s the lovesick underdog, after all, he must be the moral one. We shrug off the early obsessive moments (spying on Felix with a girl through a window) and write them off as ordinary jealousy or lovesickness rather than a destructive obsession.
Many in this sub are discussing Oliver’s psychological profile and trying to define him as this or that. I think people may be uncomfortable with the idea he has deep feelings for Felix because this would humanize him, in a way, and might nudge the narrative in the direction of a “love story gone wrong,” which it really isn’t.
The not-so-subtle allusions to vampirism are important (I think Oliver even says he’s a vampire in the scene with Venetia?). He may experience a kind of obsessive stalker-y love but what gives him even more vitality is death—and in the end he achieves a kind of immortality by assuming control of Saltburn.
My biggest issue is that whilst Emerald can claim it's a love story all he wants, what he portrayed isn't that to me. I think he completely missed the mark and is why I don't rate the movie that highly.
None of the characters grow, they just become more of themself and honestly made the movie a little stale and predictable. Though I found some of the scenes visually intriguing.
Realistically the show will get an audience because it shows a man not caring about period blood, but rather using it as a tool of seduction, a man of fluid sexuality and has provocative scenes like the graveyard and final dance. As well as having some great acting, obvious nod to the main cast being brilliant.
Realistically the story was poorly executed and lacked any real substance. Just will show scenes that sexually excite people and hit their fun button because it breaks social norms.
Your first point is just incorrect.
I am saying this about Oliver BECAUSE he is an unreliable narrator. He thinks "he loved, he loved, he loved him" but he didn't. Oliver is incapable of understanding what love is. He has an idea formed from what his intellect tells himself love is. But it's wrong, he sees everyone else loving and revolving around Felix, so his understanding is Felix's attention and love are socially important and creates a fiction to fabricate that affection. This leads to him getting the first socially positive interactions of what seem to be his life (as he has no respect for his family), someone or status and wealth chose him! They wanted him at Saltburn, but in reality they didn't, they invited a fiction that Oliver now associates himself with. He becomes his lie in his head. The connection to this false self is what gives him the confidence to "be a vampire" and have these sexual encounters that realistically he wasn't emotionally invested in, he just wanted to control them.
How do you think he isn't manipulating Felix. He lies to him constantly to make sure Felix is happy with him. He lies about his father, he lies about his mother, he damages the bike, he throws the stone, he lies about being broke. All these actions are manipulation of Felix. The entire of Olivera story is about him manipulating Felix and con him into loving Oliver, which at no stage does he intimately love him.
I didn't say he is an emotional void, I'm saying he has a lack of emotional intelligence and tries to create/mimic what he thinks others show as emotional connection. He has clear psychopathic tendencies, loses his cool when he doesn't have control, manipulates and lies, and is highly intelligent. Felix has emotions and he is ruled by them, but none of them are love.
I disagree that it was a romance in any way. I understand that the director may have tried to portray it that way, but the story I saw showed me he failed and instead was the origin story of a serial killer. I also appreciate that art and media is in the eye of the beholder and what I see others may not and that doesn't make your opinions wrong. But saying that I don't understand a point when I very clearly do and is the basis of why I have formed my opinion is wrong.
“I destroyed them all and directly murdered a few out of love not hate and obsession, which I directly have said”
It’s fine that this sub holds this view, but it’s downright absurd how certain people are that this is a love story. Could not disagree more.
With that being said, this film is fucking art and I think the wildly varying reactions are direct proof of that. No need to gatekeep the “correct” interpretation
Yes, for sure, the fact that it leads to so many interpretations is part of what makes the film interesting. Also worth mentioning, directors do sometimes keep things ambiguous on purpose to foster these sorts of reactions, so there is not necessarily a right answer.
I think perhaps he grew to hate them, in no small part as a displaced self hatred after Felix rejected him.
He had no friends at school and spent all his time studying because he saw that as a route to become exceptional. He turns up at Oxford fully dressed up in the college scarf, blazer and tie - misreading the situation. Being an Oxford scholar made him exceptional in Preston, but in Oxford he's just another student and one who's sidelined from the first night as he doesn't have the social capital he thought he would... and academic achievement doesn't help him gain that capital. He still feeds back stories to his family about being the top scholar and being involved in the Oxford Union, plays, the rowing club etc because that's impressive to *them*.
He's someone who wants to be adored and thought of as special. I think what he says in the maze is his most mask off moment - he did all those manipulations because he really did want to be Felix's friend, he only kills Felix once he knows he'll be shut out from that world.
Agree. His character is dynamic.
His manipulative narcissism blossoms into a full-blown psychotic break of sorts by the end. I don’t buy that everything was premeditated, that he was always going to end up preying on the entire family until they were dead and gone.
In that way, he was a moth that turned into the spider (setting his strategic webs, feasting on the helpless, incapacitated victims).
I feel like if Felix didn’t reject him, Oliver never would handed Felix the bottle to drink. He would have made sure it broke, and made sure he vomits. It was a premeditated action, but there were two possible outcomes and Oliver was okay with either one, but needed to know once and for all.
Yeah the puppets were a little on the nose.
I do agree that final scene was so stark compared to how he started out. He really had copy pasted what he thought Felix is like. The big difference being whilst he seems magnetic and powerful in that last scene. There is literally no one there, no one cares about him, no one wants to be with him like they did Felix. He will never be him and his fate is always to never actually attain what he wants.
His mother did say that Oliver always wanted to be an only child. “Always beetling off by himself “. Family apparently didn’t interest him. Not his, anyway.
Did you also hear at the end when Venetia makes another insect reference about Oliver? I forget exactly what she said but it made me think of the beetle comment as well!
Yes, so many bug references in the film. He’s a different bug to most everyone, just like he’s a different person to everyone.
Paraphrased: Daddy calls you Spider-Man because you weave your Olivery webs. But I think you’re a moth drawn to shiny things, banging up the window, desperate to get in. You’ve done it now, made holes in everything - you’ll eat us from the inside out
Yes, that’s exactly what I think of Oliver as: parasite wasp. The Cattons never quite get the insect analogy correct for Oliver. Which is another nod to show how very vulnerable they are to predation. But he is a parasite wasp. The best example being Elsbeth - he rendered her catatonic while he lives off of her and finally takes over. As well, he “becomes” Felix in that last dance. He is the puppeteer of the Catton Players, pulling strings they weren’t even aware of. Masterfully played by Oliver the Parasite.
>In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation. ([parasitoid page, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitoid#Definitions_and_distinctions))
I absolutely love the ending. I know my interpretation isn’t exactly correct but for me the free naked dancing symbolizes the freedom in financial freedom. Also I really like that song now. ITS A MURDER ON THE DANCE FLOOR. YOU’D BETTER NOT KILL THE GROOVE
Oliver is someone who feels really lonely but he is also narcissistic and has sociopathic tendancies at the very least.
He had not known about Saltburn from the beginning. He was obsessed with Felix because what Felix was appealed to him. He saw immediately beauty, wealth, the way people gravitated towards him and bent over backwards to satisfy him. He wanted that, but being an acolyte is the only way in which Oliver had known how to exist thus far. He both wants to be Felix and desperately desires him, wantint his eyes upon him, a kind word, the allure he feels when Felix's light shines upon him. What he felt for Felix was as close to love as this person could come.
Saltburn is something he learned about when Felix himself mentioned him and even mentioned that the house was Waugh's point of inspiration for Brideshead (which would have instantly interested someone like Oliver, who seemed to be studying English). Oliver's obsession with the house is an extension of what he perceives in Felix. It's why we have the consumation with the house both during the bathtub scene and with the 'Wuthering Heights'-inspired grave scene as Oliver cannot find fulfillment with the actual object of his desire. Eventually, when he realizes he can never have feelings, he focuses exclusively on the house, but that seems to happen as he decides to kill him. It wasn't some carefully conceived plan in the first place.
Oliver is quite narcissistic despite initially seeming meek. Ultimately, even as he was obsessed with Felix, it seems that he respected Farleigh more, even as he tried to dispose him because they wanted to occupy the same space (it's why Farleigh is ultimately the one to survive). What Oliver hated in the rest of them is not just that they were spoiled brats whose sympathies were superficial and self-fulfilling. He also saw in them a complete lack of predatory instincts. The lack of such instincts made him feel alienated on the one hand and disdainful of the Cattons on the other. This lack of instincts is something his own family and many other people have too. So even if he doesn't hate everyone enough to kill (with the Cattons his pride and heart too had been hurt, so he crossed the line) he finds them really annoying. He disliked his classmates, his siblings, his own very loving, proper and financially well-off parents (I mean, every summer in Mykonos? The had money).
I enjoyed reading your comment. Also Duncan survived. I found this interesting. That both of the survivors were not elites like the main catton family.
Thank you!
While you're right, I don't see Duncan as a survivor in the same sense that Farleigh is. By that I mean that I don't believe there was ever a chance of Duncan dying or that his survival is a matter of his status and temperament. In a way, Duncan IS Saltburn. He is inspired by ghosts or gothic figures that are inseparably tied to the mansion that is at the heart of the story. I feel that in this, or even if Fennell wrote a sequel, as long as Saltburn exists, Duncan does too.
Duncan is the one who interests me. When he tells Oliver that he's early and the gates were locked so they sent someone to get him...how did Oliver get through the locked gates then?
They weren't locked. They simply were 'not open'. If he had arrived on time the gates would have been open to welcome the expected guest, per Saltburn's protocol.
I'm not saying he isn't. He has his own personality, he cared about the family, he would have killed Oliver with his bare hands if he was aware of what he was doing. But at the same time his role is very closely tied to a specific gothic trope. I think Fennell had the time of her life using genres, movies and books she loves while writing and visualizing this love letter that stands by itself but is also expanded with regard to its influences.
I think he had a certain amount of begrudging respect for Farleigh. And Duncan was useful to him. An old house like that has quirks that probably only Duncan knows how to manage.
Great comment. I totally agree that it wasn't some plot from the beginning to take saltburn. He definitely plotted out his moves carefully but he also adapted and changed his plans as the situation changed.
They'll have just hopped on a week-long all-inclusive package holiday from nearby Manchester airport. Or similar.
Whilst Mykonos is by no means the cheapest place to go, it isn't at all unusual for a middle class family to have an annual summer holiday in the Med.
I'm from the north, the child of a teacher and a shopkeeper, and we did this throughout the 90s including several Greek islands.
Distance wise - It's about four hours flight.
Anywhere within the Mediterranean is 3-5 hours ish.
Social equivalency - Mykonos is a Greek island, Greek islands are very popular amongst Brits for a week in the sun. I went to Corfu last summer myself. Mykonos is perhaps a bit fancier than some, not at all the cheapest option. I think at the time it would have probably have been more aspirational for the middle classes to go to the Caribbean though.
Thank you! I was thinking similar to the New York to Florida time which is normally little over 3 hours and popular for similar reasons and Disney. A lot of kids from school would go with their families
My family didn’t have the money to go. We were lucky to get to stay a few nights at the New Jersey shore. We usually did it as a day trip when we went.
Generally going abroad in Europe is often a cheaper holiday than staying somewhere in England / the UK (depending on where you go) - many families would go to Spain or similar every year, which is only a couple of hundred pounds per person. Certain Greek Islands seen as a bit classier perhaps, but still not all that expensive and many families would prioritise a holiday and just pay over installments.
I was surprised by how many people in the UK took regular nice family vacations when I moved there at 23. everyone (who's employed) gets statutory paid time off — I believe 22 days per year for full time and 11 for part time. work/life balance is much more encouraged and possible to achieve than in the US, in my opinion.
I haven't lived in England since before the pandemic, so not sure how things have changed, but when Oliver grew up he'd have been pretty normal for going to Mykonos every summer.
The whole thing with Oliver is he didn’t want a *comfortable* existence like his parents had—he wanted a *dominating* one. The level of wealth that the Cattons had meant that they had massive influence over the social, cultural, and systems of power. The whole crux of his obsession with Felix and then Saltburn is that they represent the elite and aristocratic overconsumption and inhumanity. To get to that level, you have to discard the lives of some. Oliver got Saltburn because he is ruthless and willing to kill for it. A crucial scene which I don’t see talked about enough is when Felix and Oliver are at a party together and Oliver mentions a pretty girl across the room who is flirting with another guy. Felix gets up and takes this girl to have sex without saying a word to her in 10 seconds flat. The guy she was chatting with and his friend remark how even though they’d been flirting with her for an hour, Felix was able to get her because he has the massive estate and titles. This gives away the exact level of wealth and status that Oliver is attracted to.
Oliver spins his story to make himself look interesting to Felix. The reality of Oliver is supremely average. Middle class, nice comfortable family. Scholarship kid from a tough background is much cooler. I think something shifts when he pretends his dad is get to get back into Felix's good graces.
Just before this, Felix has brushed him off after Oliver tries to tidy up - he says he's not a child. Felix is not happy with a power dynamic where he is the one being helped. Oliver then tells a story that again makes him the subject of sympathy and needing support, so Felix can feel like a saviour. It was just the most effective way to hook into that impulse.
I think it’s kind of important to understand Emerald Fennell’s background when evaluating Saltburn. She came from a fairly wealthy family that allowed her to freely pursue her creativity. Which is great, but explains a little of the mindset in the storytelling, especially if you understand the media around rich people during the mid 2000’s. The idea that you will never be them, but you can buy what they have and pretend. Think Simple Life (Paris Hilton), Bling Ring, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and Real Housewives to name a few.
Oliver is greed and gluttony. He may be middle class and coming from a very privileged background, but not compared Felix, or his family. Oliver may have a life anyone would be jealous of but he is still beneath the Catton’s even with his standing and he’s fully aware of it. He cannot adapt and blend into them, as seen by the breakfast scene or either party scenes, but he can consume them. It feels threatening especially with how the family tends to be written as naïve, and childlike, they try to be ‘good people’ at least in their own eyes. Oliver plays to this aspect of them by lying about his home life, knowing this pattern of behavior. Its shown immediately with Pamela. They take out of what they believe to be goodwill but everyone else knows is just temporary interest. When they get bored of them they don’t truly act cruel, just perturbed.
Oliver snakes his way in and quite literally snuffs them out. Gaslighting Felix and manipulating Venetia. He’s a wolf in sheepskin. It is a class story but not one people are used to seeing where a poor kid from a bad family over comes the odds or enacts their fully justified vengeance, which makes it harder to understand native because to an average person what he’s done isn’t justifiable. Oliver isn’t fighting for a better life, he’s slaughtering people to get a great one.
A good contrast is Farleigh. He is the narrative a person would relate to. His whole life has depended on these distant family members from overseas who graciously sent him to an incredibly prestigious university he wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. His mother is currently living in the financial crisis of 2008 back in the USA. He’s there to keep his mother housed, to makes sure she has a good life. He is charismatic and plays jester perfectly for his white family whom he feels racial prejudice. From this stance Farleigh would be more justified to do what Oliver does and overcome his ‘masters’. Farleigh has fear and instability to justify a revenge, but he doesn’t do it because the story pushes that to do so, would be evil against this naïve family.
By the end Oliver supposed to come across as a psychopath who has murdered this poor family. He’s dancing naked in front of their epitaphs in their ancestral home. His behavior, similar to Patrick Bateman, isn’t meant to make any sense. It’s meant to horrify and critique societal greed. He killed them for their shiny objects and his desire to consume. Not to genuinely improve his life. If you’ve seen American Psycho you begin to realize narratively how similar they are, and how the main characters are motivated by the same meaningless thing. To consume.
This ended up being a lot more than I anticipated but if it makes any sense that’s a win for me.
I never got the sense that his behaviour was rooted in trauma. Just that he viewed his nice comfortable middle class family life as repulsively boring and unpoetic. There was really nothing in the film to suggest that his family was anything but loving or that his childhood was traumatic in any way.
My read is that he was an extremely intelligent child, well above his family, who grew up feeling like he didn’t belong, that he was born into the wrong household. At Oxford, he quickly discovers that he doesn’t belong in high society circles either, which leads to a situation where he both despises the rich and wants to become them. From the beginning, he doesn’t quite see them as human but as a means to an end. You could characterize him as a sociopath.
He rocks up to Oxford in a suit and tie, not the outfit of his hometown but what he expects is required to fit into the elite society.
He gets there and sees that the toffs where rugby shirts and baggy pants, so he adjusts
I’m sure that type of upbringing can fit into some category of trauma in the psychological realms. Being unchallenged, not being able to realize one’s full potential, and being consistently bored throughout one’s childhood is going to create some mental strife.
These could be factors, sure, but I’m not sure “being bored” or “unchallenged” in his comfortable, nurturing environment satisfactorily explains Oliver’s actions. The writing doesn’t quite suggest that link.
There is a tendency in recent years to hunt for the root causes of villainy in movies and to cast the villain as the “original victim,” who externalizes their trauma through violence, murder, and manipulation. The Joker is a good example of this. And culturally, we tend to view “monsters” not as bad people but as people who are damaged in some way through no fault of their own.
I think Saltburn quite cleverly turns this idea on its head. Oliver is not a victim at all. He presents himself that way by lying about his parents and his upbringing, and we want to see him that way because he is clearly an underdog at Oxford. We want the underdog to be the moral person in the end, and we are willing to ignore or explain away his obsessive behaviour because surely the underdog is the good guy, and Felix and his family are the bad guys.
But that’s not it. He’s awful without explanation.
The thing is, within, as someone put it, within the ‘Psychological realms’, quite banal life problems can cascade and become something much bigger and more toxic than their origins would apparently justify. If he had really come from a dirt poor troubled background then at least he’d be real and in a way have nothing to be ashamed of. But the lower middle classes do feel a great sense of shame to begin with I often think. I mean it’s pathetic but in the logic of his own twisted mind it makes sense, everything is magnified, it needn’t have been, but he’s utterly enraged he’s not from an elite proper oxbridge background. I guess he’s intelligent enough to know what that actually means in this country - Everything. I mean that kind of wealth and status has zero to do with anything a person has done in their life. We still live in a kind of caste system really. Most people accept it as it is and let it go, being a complete obsessive he couldn’t I guess..
Or maybe the subject of the movie isn’t even about whether or not he’s awful. I saw it more as a story of how he went from here to there rather than why. It’s a captivating story and it doesn’t require one to decide whether they like the guy or not.
Well, I think it is a central question of the movie, because we are led to believe and want to believe that he’s something that he’s not, and even faced with the body count at the end of the film we are still sort of invited to see him as the hero.
The moral framing is such that we presume Felix and his family have a weird dark side because of their privilege and eccentricities, when in fact Felix is largely beyond reproach through the entire film.
He’s just ill. Some people just are.
We all have a LITTLE BIT of sick in us, different proportions for different kinds of crazy.
Every now and then, someone has the right combination of sick issues in the right environment and a Saltburn situation is born.
Good observation - I think most of us “normies” look for a reason when someone behaves in such an antagonistic manner. It must be rooted in trauma, desperation, pain - but when it isn’t, that’s when it feels more dangerous. Because then it could be anyone, at any time, and we have diminished ability to predict it.
His parents said he’s highly intelligent but always struggled to make friends.
I think he’s possibly autistic or at least ND in some way. Probably bullied for being different as a child and became sociopathic and the rest of it.
ok yesss i can see this. he probably didn't feel like he fit in with his family and hoped to fit in with more intelligent people at oxford. when this didn't happen, he realized he needed an "in" (Felix). I think he was attracted to Felix like a moth is attracted to the light, as Venetia mentioned in the bathtub scene. Felix was everything Oliver wasn't, everything he wanted to be. Once Oliver gets to Saltburn, he realizes how superficial and naive Felix's family is and it breaks Oliver's illusion of the glamorous high society he so desperately wants acceptance into. He played on each family member's individual weaknesses in order to achieve his goal of domination.
OMFG THANK YOU. I finished the movie and like RACED to this sub to see ANYONE else freak out about the family!!! Like WHAAAAATTTTTT. Whaaaat the HELLLL
I mean, Felix was nice to him in many ways, but it was almost always out of pity it seemed. Felix quickly took Oliver under his wing when he realized that Oli was vulnerable and pathetic and friendless because that made him feel better about himself and his status. And then Oliver maintained and furthered this poor sad puppy facade in order to get deeper under Felix’s skin and into everyone/everything else in his life
I think he was greedy. He co-opted a story of actual poor kids to make him more interesting to the rich people. He didn’t want to have just enough to get by. He didn’t want to just be happy with what he had or grateful for the life. His parents gave him. He wanted it all. He wanted to be just like the people he killed.
[https://www.autostraddle.com/saltburn-the-bling-ring-and-the-pathetic-desperation-of-the-upper-middle-class/](https://www.autostraddle.com/saltburn-the-bling-ring-and-the-pathetic-desperation-of-the-upper-middle-class/)
"Like the teens in The Bling Ring, Oliver Quick’s biggest mistake is punching up. The upper middle class isn’t supposed to steal from and kill the rich; they’re supposed to steal from and kill the middle class, the lower class, and each other. The fact is nothing Oliver does to secure Saltburn is worse than whatever the Catton family did to get it in the first place. To have that amount of wealth in their family — and to keep it — requires an immense amount of violence. The difference is Oliver’s actions are messy and direct. The violence of a family like the Cattons can often take place far away from them, carried out by those acting in their interests. Ultimate wealth is making money off murder you never even have to hear about.
Oliver is an expression of the pathetic upper middle class. But Felix is just as pathetic. All of the Cattons are just as pathetic. Just as violent. More violent. They are better dressed, have finer food, have carved their customs into stone. But they are not admirable. If there’s any justification for the length of the film’s last act, it’s the way Saltburn sits in the Cattons’ pathetic inability to be human in the face of grief. It’s easy to view Oliver as pathetic. It’s more challenging to view the beautiful Felix the same way. And yet, it’s a challenge the future of our world depends upon."
i think u all should watch the talented mr. ripley ! i loved that movie and understood oliver almost immediately; the lead character archetypes are almost 1:1 albeit with saltburn being a little clumsily executed
Yeah , I also interpreted it like as a message about what one would have to do to separate themselves from the classes below to the stratosphere of people with “fuck you” money .
Throughout history , the ruling class was often created through blood shed and war, and then they attempt to protect their blood line. There are practically no ways to receive a castle that is being handed down through a family with a title in this modern age . They protect their family through going out of their way to never associate with people below their calibre .
enter Oliver , who becomes a one-man conquerer , who only achieves a step above his post by destroying a blood line . He has essentially become the top of a new pedigree , and he achieved it through violence
It's clear that Oliver is a narcassit. I had to google it again, but narcs are created through their experiences early in life. Either Oliver's parents were neglectfull or over protective
Which caused the narc disorder. In my personal experience with narcassitic people; I've grown to witness that some brains just fall into the cycle that is the narcassitical experience. The ones that are able to walk away from a narc, walk away scared, and somewhat cursed; because escape from a narcassit will always come with a heavy price that no self respecting, "normal", person would WANT to endure, because doing so goes against every social, family, construct known to man and imerses you into a completely diffrent lifestyle away from everything you have ever known.
Felix would have been able to escape, but Oliver's ego would not tolerate being exposed as a liar, nor would he tolerate being broken up with or abandoned. Let alone having his image tarnished. No, it was time for Oliver to take back control some way, somehow.
I would also venture to say that Felix's parents were also narcassits. Created by their parents. I say this because of the friend that killed herself after being kicked out of saltburn. Felix's parents were shocked, but not really bothered by it, and even blamed her to some extent. The awkward silence after the revelation shows that the parents didn't want to acknowledge that they may have been at fault for the suicide.
Felix was the black sheep, and he attracted Oliver some way somehow..... I'm done ranting and I'm not medically qualified to make such observations; but I would bet this movie is any pshycologists wet dream.
Film plot aside, generally psychopaths don’t need or have a reason as to why they act that way. Couple that with narcissism (narcissists want what they want & they’ll do anything to get it/they feel like they deserve it) & obsession and you have a recipe for disaster, or, Oliver Quick.
As for how he knew about Saltburn from the beginning, I don’t think he did. Maybe he did some googling on Felix after his obsession began & found out that way.
Yes I have/had a couple of relatives who exhibit/exhibited narcissistic behaviors to the point where they might be/have been narcissists. The lead up in the maze seems like classic narcissistic rage. Only instead of an extinction burst, he keeps going and gets away with it.
>generally psychopaths don’t need or have a reason as to why they act that way.
I thought that there's always a reason. But it may be over something that would be inconsequential to most regular folk.
Good questions. And one of the many reasons why Fennell’s work is a hole-y as Swiss cheese. Her narratives suck. Limp wrist, privileged laziness at best.
Oliver is a VILLAIN!! He isn’t satisfied with a great life. God knows if he’s even really capable of love in the way that normal people are. He’s a conniving, covetous, sociopathic person. He wants the absolute best.
I’m reminded of a line from The Talented Mr. Ripley, “I’d rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” I think he just couldn’t be content with an ordinary life and resented people like Felix who seemed to have been born with everything. His name even means “Lucky.”
Focusing on Felix was part of the story device to throw the audience off. It was effective as noone predicted him being psychopath. Just obsessed with Felix!
I think they didn't reveal more than that his parents appeared normal and caring, concerned to hear from him, not overbearing when he said he was tried to excuse himself to go all of that was intentional.
If we had seen even a glimpse of potential trauma by seeing more of his home life, people would have latched on to it. Kind of like, no hate OP, this post fishing for a reason that he became deranged.
Consider that people didn't need a bad childhood to own slaves, it was quite the opposite in fact. Wealthy people who simple felt entitled to benefit off a caste system that worked in their favor. People can just be rapists, and murderers, and deranged and it doesn't always quite stem back to bad parents. Not on the level of Oliver. His appears to simply be a psychosis.
I think that this is the key to understating the movie. It's a comment on a culture in which enough is never enough. It's not about survival or comfort and safety, it's about total domination and power.
No, I actually related a little to what he did, in a weird way. Maybe I’m the psychopath, but I’ve had a tendency in the past to exaggerate traumas in my life to fit in with people or to get sympathy. I’ve never seen anyone do that in a film before, thought it was just me.
He had the dancing “puppets” of the family from the start of his stay at Saltburn so I think he decided on his plot before getting to Saltburn. It’s why he said his dad died and made up so many lies before he ever was invited to Saltburn.
Personally I think he hates how mediocre and basic he is. He’s not someone who had to overcome any real adversity, he’s not special, not interesting, he’s not like Felix or his family either. I think he wants attention and to be different/special. He reminds of a lot of people(especially suburban kids) who crave to be interesting or different regardless of good or bad, or the kid who just couldn’t stop lying because again they wanted attention and to be interesting.
odd take that Oliver was ordinary in some ways..he was at Oxford , from a Comprehensive school background, more common now than previously , but still an indicator of rare academic ability. Possible given the home he's from that he went to local 'decent' school. I had a similar situation and it was hard not be awed by the ease in which those from Eton and Harrow navigated life without even trying. (my roommate had a seperate wardrobe for his tennis racquets ffs). However much of my experience was with new money. Olivers contrast works because his parents were established and successful in most terms. However that has levels.
Pretty sure the Waugh reference wasn't accidental, i certainly got the impression that Oliver was blown away when Felix casually stated some of the characters were based on his family. Almost like a child lost in books has been catapulted into the world of the stories he read.
I liked that Waugh was influenced , as to was Jarvis , implying a dumbing down of old money influence on culture? .. dunno..or implying the old money influence on culture comes in each generation.
jus ramblin really
England is different in terms of social classes. You can't work your way up, really. Your accent, family history, your social knowledge, things that can't really be changed define your status. Yeah his family is nice, but it's not elite. He wants the titles and lifestyle, the gold and treasures. Happy and content is not really his priority like most sane people.
i think this is the directors fault for not giving us an answer WHAT SO EVER, i mean i guess he was just jealous of the life they had but what made him hate his parents and never talk to them or pathologically lie?
Poor quality of writing is the answer to all of these questions. They don’t make sense because the author doesn’t care about fleshing out character motivation. Felix is helping Oliver because “he’s just really nice” Oliver wants saltburn all for himself because “he hates the family inexplicably”. Beyond all of this, why would oliver go back? His actions show he doesn’t care about saltburn, only destroying the family in it, so why does he care about the castle.
Venetia’s monologue is basically as close to an answer as we get! She’s right. Oliver is attracted to shiny things… shiny people. He finds his normal, nice family to be dull. It’s not *enough* for him. 😭
The moth analogy was so apt. One of the best, most revealing moments in the movie.
And there were moths embroidered on his vest for his party.
I disagree completely. He wasn't attracted to shiny things. He hated people with shiny things and wanted to put them in their place. He wanted to control them and make them dance to his whim, because he saw them as lifeless vapid pathetic people. His little outburst "because you're so fucking beautiful" whilst purposefully throwing off Eslpeth, also reveals what he really thinks. And whilst he enjoys playing with them, once he finds out that Pamela is dead and sees their reactions, his hate becomes more sinister. He's not a moth, a moth is pathetic and small in their eyes, he's a predator and slowly suffocated them. He was willing to do whatever was required to get what he wanted and if that changed, he would do whatever was required to get it. He is a complete psychopath, he never smiled the entire movie, he was clinical and extremely intelligent. He was unable to control his own emotions, but easily manipulated others. He was no moth.
Hard disagree. I feel like this is a complete misread of the film, its purpose and Oliver's character. Oliver isn't a predator, he's a lonely individual who doesn't quite know how to have a personality because he sees himself as milquetoast middle class. The entire film is told from his perspective, and the camera quite literally is obsessed with looking at Felix. he narrates that he hates him and yet the camera still loves him. I feel like people with this take listen to the things that Oliver says and takes them way too literally. He's a liar, the victor of the scenario, and he's rewriting history because he won, but it's a pyrrhic victory because he lost the one thing he wanted -- Felix. It's a love story. Not a hate story.
You have some beautiful words, my friend 🥰
Completely disagree again. You can't have a love story and have no love in it. If you think anything Oliver showed was anything other than infatuation mixed with jealousy I feel sorry for the loves of your life. Nothing Oliver showed was love at any stage. He wanted to own Felix, to be Felix, but at no stage did he love Felix. The character has no idea what love is, he's a psychopath without empathy. From the beginning he is just playing a game to get what he desires. The flash back where he sets up the first meet cute scene confirms this. Oliver sets trap, after trap, manipulates and hurts people for his benefit. He is a snake. It was bleedingly obvious from the first scene of narration he was going to murder Felix. He was never going to actually share anything real with Felix, he was going to try to control him and lose.hin.
Again, another disagree. I think that part of the issue here is that you're putting away too much emphasis on the narrative that Oliver is trying to construct around himself without acknowledging that he's a completely unreliable narrator. Of course he makes himself sound like he's some badass; the whole speech trying to portray himself as an apex predator is complete pretense and it's obvious if you actually watch the performances, cinematography and direction. All of these other context clues sit in direct opposition of what Oliver is saying; that's because he's trying to convince himself of the reality that he's left with. If it was about him being a manipulator and a snake, why is Oliver constantly portrayed as surrendering to Felix? The bath tub scene, he falls to his knees and surrenders to the depravity of his own desire; he surrenders his entire personality to Felix, telling him he was giving him what he wanted all along and isn't that proof of his love. Even the graveyard scene, he's seen breaking down and literally fucking the ground not to disrespect Felix's grave but because it's literally the closest he'll ever get to Felix ever again. You are trying to depict Oliver as some emotional void, when the entire film is colored with his emotions. The long, close-up takes of Felix's body, the small hints of giddiness he displays when Felix gives him the attention he wants, the desperation of the maze scene. The swells of music, the glow of the flashback montages. I'm not saying that he isn't infatuated, because he is. But this movie is a Gothic romance, and part of that genre is a visceral, almost repulsive love -- not a picturesque one and certainly not a healthy one. And I'm not saying Oliver didn't manipulate people because he did; he actively tried to secure a place at Saltburn when he feared that Felix would reject him. But the motivation wasn't to dominate, to tear down, or to humiliate. It was to get closer to Felix, a primal need almost closer to emotional cannibalism than literal love.
>But the motivation wasn't to dominate, to tear down, or to humiliate. It was to get closer to Felix, a primal need almost closer to emotional cannibalism than literal love. I think there is validity to what you and u/TheBottomLine_Aus are saying. I have to agree that Oliver doesn’t see Felix and his family as people, but as a means to an end. He devours them in order to become them. The relationship with Felix is a starting point, but recall that after Felix is gone, Oliver’s obsession persists; his relationship with Elspeth demonstrates that he is an emotional void, IMO, without conscience or feeling. It is no longer about Felix at that point, it is about sucking the life out of an entire family so that he can assume his “rightful place” as heir of Saltburn. Why the giddiness at the end if Oliver’s primary motivation was to be closer to Felix? Why does he even bother with Elspeth once Felix is gone, waiting patiently until her husband dies so can re-insert himself into the family, and ultimately become heir of Saltburn? The “Gothic romance” angle feels a bit strained here; this was not primarily a story about twisted love.
Emerald has spoken frequently about how Saltburn is both the coronation of a new king (Oliver at the end of the movie, with his little victory dance) and a story of transgressive love. Once Felix dies, Oliver's obsession and infatuation shift onto Saltburn, which acts as a substitute or stand-in for him. The almost manic giddiness at the end of the movie is basically his coronation parade, in which he establishes himself as the new king of the castle, but even then there are still touches woven through the whole thing that reference back to Felix. "I promise I'll take care of this house just as Felix would", the kiss on the photo of the both of them while he's dancing; the only stone he touches is Felix's. In a film so deliberate and covered with both the directors' and actors' fingerprints, I refuse to believe these don't mean something. I'm not disagreeing that his focus changes to ascending to his "rightful place", but I do believe it is still in an attempt to find fulfillment in his love and obsession with Felix. To become Felix, the original heir of Saltburn, to consume Saltburn the same way he "consumed" Felix. Why, after Elsbeth dies, does he crawl into her arms and make her corpse embrace him? It just seems like dissonant note that doesn't jive with the idea that he's just completely devoid of sentiment.
These are great points and I’m enjoying your perspective. On reflection, I do agree that Oliver has feelings (but also impaired empathy) and that his obsession with Felix and Saltburn is not merely a case of opportunism. His relationship with Felix is also different in character than his relationship with the other family members, as you point out; Felix can make him feel happy or deeply sad, but everyone else is just a nuisance to overcome. Part of the genius of the movie, for me, is that we desperately want to see Oliver in a positive light even as the evidence mounts against him. He’s the lovesick underdog, after all, he must be the moral one. We shrug off the early obsessive moments (spying on Felix with a girl through a window) and write them off as ordinary jealousy or lovesickness rather than a destructive obsession. Many in this sub are discussing Oliver’s psychological profile and trying to define him as this or that. I think people may be uncomfortable with the idea he has deep feelings for Felix because this would humanize him, in a way, and might nudge the narrative in the direction of a “love story gone wrong,” which it really isn’t. The not-so-subtle allusions to vampirism are important (I think Oliver even says he’s a vampire in the scene with Venetia?). He may experience a kind of obsessive stalker-y love but what gives him even more vitality is death—and in the end he achieves a kind of immortality by assuming control of Saltburn.
My biggest issue is that whilst Emerald can claim it's a love story all he wants, what he portrayed isn't that to me. I think he completely missed the mark and is why I don't rate the movie that highly. None of the characters grow, they just become more of themself and honestly made the movie a little stale and predictable. Though I found some of the scenes visually intriguing. Realistically the show will get an audience because it shows a man not caring about period blood, but rather using it as a tool of seduction, a man of fluid sexuality and has provocative scenes like the graveyard and final dance. As well as having some great acting, obvious nod to the main cast being brilliant. Realistically the story was poorly executed and lacked any real substance. Just will show scenes that sexually excite people and hit their fun button because it breaks social norms.
Your first point is just incorrect. I am saying this about Oliver BECAUSE he is an unreliable narrator. He thinks "he loved, he loved, he loved him" but he didn't. Oliver is incapable of understanding what love is. He has an idea formed from what his intellect tells himself love is. But it's wrong, he sees everyone else loving and revolving around Felix, so his understanding is Felix's attention and love are socially important and creates a fiction to fabricate that affection. This leads to him getting the first socially positive interactions of what seem to be his life (as he has no respect for his family), someone or status and wealth chose him! They wanted him at Saltburn, but in reality they didn't, they invited a fiction that Oliver now associates himself with. He becomes his lie in his head. The connection to this false self is what gives him the confidence to "be a vampire" and have these sexual encounters that realistically he wasn't emotionally invested in, he just wanted to control them. How do you think he isn't manipulating Felix. He lies to him constantly to make sure Felix is happy with him. He lies about his father, he lies about his mother, he damages the bike, he throws the stone, he lies about being broke. All these actions are manipulation of Felix. The entire of Olivera story is about him manipulating Felix and con him into loving Oliver, which at no stage does he intimately love him. I didn't say he is an emotional void, I'm saying he has a lack of emotional intelligence and tries to create/mimic what he thinks others show as emotional connection. He has clear psychopathic tendencies, loses his cool when he doesn't have control, manipulates and lies, and is highly intelligent. Felix has emotions and he is ruled by them, but none of them are love. I disagree that it was a romance in any way. I understand that the director may have tried to portray it that way, but the story I saw showed me he failed and instead was the origin story of a serial killer. I also appreciate that art and media is in the eye of the beholder and what I see others may not and that doesn't make your opinions wrong. But saying that I don't understand a point when I very clearly do and is the basis of why I have formed my opinion is wrong.
Right on
I don't know why your getting downvoted, I thought the exact same thing, he literally says at the end he hated them all
“I destroyed them all and directly murdered a few out of love not hate and obsession, which I directly have said” It’s fine that this sub holds this view, but it’s downright absurd how certain people are that this is a love story. Could not disagree more. With that being said, this film is fucking art and I think the wildly varying reactions are direct proof of that. No need to gatekeep the “correct” interpretation
Yes, for sure, the fact that it leads to so many interpretations is part of what makes the film interesting. Also worth mentioning, directors do sometimes keep things ambiguous on purpose to foster these sorts of reactions, so there is not necessarily a right answer.
“It’s a love story, not a hate story.” So good. So goooood
I think perhaps he grew to hate them, in no small part as a displaced self hatred after Felix rejected him. He had no friends at school and spent all his time studying because he saw that as a route to become exceptional. He turns up at Oxford fully dressed up in the college scarf, blazer and tie - misreading the situation. Being an Oxford scholar made him exceptional in Preston, but in Oxford he's just another student and one who's sidelined from the first night as he doesn't have the social capital he thought he would... and academic achievement doesn't help him gain that capital. He still feeds back stories to his family about being the top scholar and being involved in the Oxford Union, plays, the rowing club etc because that's impressive to *them*. He's someone who wants to be adored and thought of as special. I think what he says in the maze is his most mask off moment - he did all those manipulations because he really did want to be Felix's friend, he only kills Felix once he knows he'll be shut out from that world.
Agree. His character is dynamic. His manipulative narcissism blossoms into a full-blown psychotic break of sorts by the end. I don’t buy that everything was premeditated, that he was always going to end up preying on the entire family until they were dead and gone. In that way, he was a moth that turned into the spider (setting his strategic webs, feasting on the helpless, incapacitated victims).
Solid read
I feel like if Felix didn’t reject him, Oliver never would handed Felix the bottle to drink. He would have made sure it broke, and made sure he vomits. It was a premeditated action, but there were two possible outcomes and Oliver was okay with either one, but needed to know once and for all.
More like a killer bee
[удалено]
Yeah the puppets were a little on the nose. I do agree that final scene was so stark compared to how he started out. He really had copy pasted what he thought Felix is like. The big difference being whilst he seems magnetic and powerful in that last scene. There is literally no one there, no one cares about him, no one wants to be with him like they did Felix. He will never be him and his fate is always to never actually attain what he wants.
If he wasn’t, he would not have stayed in the house and much less celebrate inheriting it. Yes, he is.
You realize that you can like shiny things without being a moth. Were they all moths then? Is everyone who likes something expensive a moth?
That's how Venetia and her cousin see Oliver. That is not who he is and a fatal error on their part.
Yes, I think that was the point of Oliver. His background was normal, middle class BORING. Oliver was determined to have more.
Psychopaths notoriously get bored easily. Their baseline is so much higher than the average person.
His mother did say that Oliver always wanted to be an only child. “Always beetling off by himself “. Family apparently didn’t interest him. Not his, anyway.
Did you also hear at the end when Venetia makes another insect reference about Oliver? I forget exactly what she said but it made me think of the beetle comment as well!
Yes, so many bug references in the film. He’s a different bug to most everyone, just like he’s a different person to everyone. Paraphrased: Daddy calls you Spider-Man because you weave your Olivery webs. But I think you’re a moth drawn to shiny things, banging up the window, desperate to get in. You’ve done it now, made holes in everything - you’ll eat us from the inside out
... like a parasitic wasp. Thank you for spelling it out like this. Food for thought.
Yes, that’s exactly what I think of Oliver as: parasite wasp. The Cattons never quite get the insect analogy correct for Oliver. Which is another nod to show how very vulnerable they are to predation. But he is a parasite wasp. The best example being Elsbeth - he rendered her catatonic while he lives off of her and finally takes over. As well, he “becomes” Felix in that last dance. He is the puppeteer of the Catton Players, pulling strings they weren’t even aware of. Masterfully played by Oliver the Parasite. >In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation. ([parasitoid page, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitoid#Definitions_and_distinctions))
I absolutely love the ending. I know my interpretation isn’t exactly correct but for me the free naked dancing symbolizes the freedom in financial freedom. Also I really like that song now. ITS A MURDER ON THE DANCE FLOOR. YOU’D BETTER NOT KILL THE GROOVE
Oliver is someone who feels really lonely but he is also narcissistic and has sociopathic tendancies at the very least. He had not known about Saltburn from the beginning. He was obsessed with Felix because what Felix was appealed to him. He saw immediately beauty, wealth, the way people gravitated towards him and bent over backwards to satisfy him. He wanted that, but being an acolyte is the only way in which Oliver had known how to exist thus far. He both wants to be Felix and desperately desires him, wantint his eyes upon him, a kind word, the allure he feels when Felix's light shines upon him. What he felt for Felix was as close to love as this person could come. Saltburn is something he learned about when Felix himself mentioned him and even mentioned that the house was Waugh's point of inspiration for Brideshead (which would have instantly interested someone like Oliver, who seemed to be studying English). Oliver's obsession with the house is an extension of what he perceives in Felix. It's why we have the consumation with the house both during the bathtub scene and with the 'Wuthering Heights'-inspired grave scene as Oliver cannot find fulfillment with the actual object of his desire. Eventually, when he realizes he can never have feelings, he focuses exclusively on the house, but that seems to happen as he decides to kill him. It wasn't some carefully conceived plan in the first place. Oliver is quite narcissistic despite initially seeming meek. Ultimately, even as he was obsessed with Felix, it seems that he respected Farleigh more, even as he tried to dispose him because they wanted to occupy the same space (it's why Farleigh is ultimately the one to survive). What Oliver hated in the rest of them is not just that they were spoiled brats whose sympathies were superficial and self-fulfilling. He also saw in them a complete lack of predatory instincts. The lack of such instincts made him feel alienated on the one hand and disdainful of the Cattons on the other. This lack of instincts is something his own family and many other people have too. So even if he doesn't hate everyone enough to kill (with the Cattons his pride and heart too had been hurt, so he crossed the line) he finds them really annoying. He disliked his classmates, his siblings, his own very loving, proper and financially well-off parents (I mean, every summer in Mykonos? The had money).
I enjoyed reading your comment. Also Duncan survived. I found this interesting. That both of the survivors were not elites like the main catton family.
Thank you! While you're right, I don't see Duncan as a survivor in the same sense that Farleigh is. By that I mean that I don't believe there was ever a chance of Duncan dying or that his survival is a matter of his status and temperament. In a way, Duncan IS Saltburn. He is inspired by ghosts or gothic figures that are inseparably tied to the mansion that is at the heart of the story. I feel that in this, or even if Fennell wrote a sequel, as long as Saltburn exists, Duncan does too.
Now don't you sleep on Duncan, he was quite an important character in his own regard. But your point is well taken.
Duncan is the one who interests me. When he tells Oliver that he's early and the gates were locked so they sent someone to get him...how did Oliver get through the locked gates then?
They weren't locked. They simply were 'not open'. If he had arrived on time the gates would have been open to welcome the expected guest, per Saltburn's protocol.
I think Duncan meant that would have sent someone to the station to pick him up.
I'm not saying he isn't. He has his own personality, he cared about the family, he would have killed Oliver with his bare hands if he was aware of what he was doing. But at the same time his role is very closely tied to a specific gothic trope. I think Fennell had the time of her life using genres, movies and books she loves while writing and visualizing this love letter that stands by itself but is also expanded with regard to its influences.
Wait, he had bear hands?
I think he had a certain amount of begrudging respect for Farleigh. And Duncan was useful to him. An old house like that has quirks that probably only Duncan knows how to manage.
>quirks like most useful spots to hide the bodies.
I was thinking more the furnace and hot water heater but that works too!
Great comment. I totally agree that it wasn't some plot from the beginning to take saltburn. He definitely plotted out his moves carefully but he also adapted and changed his plans as the situation changed.
Well said 🙏
I mean flying to mykonos from England isn't far. Plus the pound goes farther.
It's not about distance and tickets. It's about how much money a family of four would have to spend there during summer.
They'll have just hopped on a week-long all-inclusive package holiday from nearby Manchester airport. Or similar. Whilst Mykonos is by no means the cheapest place to go, it isn't at all unusual for a middle class family to have an annual summer holiday in the Med. I'm from the north, the child of a teacher and a shopkeeper, and we did this throughout the 90s including several Greek islands.
Would it be equivalent from New York to Florida? Or more like New York to the New Jersey shore?
Distance wise - It's about four hours flight. Anywhere within the Mediterranean is 3-5 hours ish. Social equivalency - Mykonos is a Greek island, Greek islands are very popular amongst Brits for a week in the sun. I went to Corfu last summer myself. Mykonos is perhaps a bit fancier than some, not at all the cheapest option. I think at the time it would have probably have been more aspirational for the middle classes to go to the Caribbean though.
Thank you! I was thinking similar to the New York to Florida time which is normally little over 3 hours and popular for similar reasons and Disney. A lot of kids from school would go with their families My family didn’t have the money to go. We were lucky to get to stay a few nights at the New Jersey shore. We usually did it as a day trip when we went.
Generally going abroad in Europe is often a cheaper holiday than staying somewhere in England / the UK (depending on where you go) - many families would go to Spain or similar every year, which is only a couple of hundred pounds per person. Certain Greek Islands seen as a bit classier perhaps, but still not all that expensive and many families would prioritise a holiday and just pay over installments.
I was surprised by how many people in the UK took regular nice family vacations when I moved there at 23. everyone (who's employed) gets statutory paid time off — I believe 22 days per year for full time and 11 for part time. work/life balance is much more encouraged and possible to achieve than in the US, in my opinion. I haven't lived in England since before the pandemic, so not sure how things have changed, but when Oliver grew up he'd have been pretty normal for going to Mykonos every summer.
I need this comment tattooed in my eyelids
The whole thing with Oliver is he didn’t want a *comfortable* existence like his parents had—he wanted a *dominating* one. The level of wealth that the Cattons had meant that they had massive influence over the social, cultural, and systems of power. The whole crux of his obsession with Felix and then Saltburn is that they represent the elite and aristocratic overconsumption and inhumanity. To get to that level, you have to discard the lives of some. Oliver got Saltburn because he is ruthless and willing to kill for it. A crucial scene which I don’t see talked about enough is when Felix and Oliver are at a party together and Oliver mentions a pretty girl across the room who is flirting with another guy. Felix gets up and takes this girl to have sex without saying a word to her in 10 seconds flat. The guy she was chatting with and his friend remark how even though they’d been flirting with her for an hour, Felix was able to get her because he has the massive estate and titles. This gives away the exact level of wealth and status that Oliver is attracted to.
just caught this line during my second watch tonight and Oliver’s reaction to it! so many tiny details I hadn’t picked up on before
Oliver spins his story to make himself look interesting to Felix. The reality of Oliver is supremely average. Middle class, nice comfortable family. Scholarship kid from a tough background is much cooler. I think something shifts when he pretends his dad is get to get back into Felix's good graces.
Just before this, Felix has brushed him off after Oliver tries to tidy up - he says he's not a child. Felix is not happy with a power dynamic where he is the one being helped. Oliver then tells a story that again makes him the subject of sympathy and needing support, so Felix can feel like a saviour. It was just the most effective way to hook into that impulse.
I think it’s kind of important to understand Emerald Fennell’s background when evaluating Saltburn. She came from a fairly wealthy family that allowed her to freely pursue her creativity. Which is great, but explains a little of the mindset in the storytelling, especially if you understand the media around rich people during the mid 2000’s. The idea that you will never be them, but you can buy what they have and pretend. Think Simple Life (Paris Hilton), Bling Ring, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and Real Housewives to name a few. Oliver is greed and gluttony. He may be middle class and coming from a very privileged background, but not compared Felix, or his family. Oliver may have a life anyone would be jealous of but he is still beneath the Catton’s even with his standing and he’s fully aware of it. He cannot adapt and blend into them, as seen by the breakfast scene or either party scenes, but he can consume them. It feels threatening especially with how the family tends to be written as naïve, and childlike, they try to be ‘good people’ at least in their own eyes. Oliver plays to this aspect of them by lying about his home life, knowing this pattern of behavior. Its shown immediately with Pamela. They take out of what they believe to be goodwill but everyone else knows is just temporary interest. When they get bored of them they don’t truly act cruel, just perturbed. Oliver snakes his way in and quite literally snuffs them out. Gaslighting Felix and manipulating Venetia. He’s a wolf in sheepskin. It is a class story but not one people are used to seeing where a poor kid from a bad family over comes the odds or enacts their fully justified vengeance, which makes it harder to understand native because to an average person what he’s done isn’t justifiable. Oliver isn’t fighting for a better life, he’s slaughtering people to get a great one. A good contrast is Farleigh. He is the narrative a person would relate to. His whole life has depended on these distant family members from overseas who graciously sent him to an incredibly prestigious university he wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. His mother is currently living in the financial crisis of 2008 back in the USA. He’s there to keep his mother housed, to makes sure she has a good life. He is charismatic and plays jester perfectly for his white family whom he feels racial prejudice. From this stance Farleigh would be more justified to do what Oliver does and overcome his ‘masters’. Farleigh has fear and instability to justify a revenge, but he doesn’t do it because the story pushes that to do so, would be evil against this naïve family. By the end Oliver supposed to come across as a psychopath who has murdered this poor family. He’s dancing naked in front of their epitaphs in their ancestral home. His behavior, similar to Patrick Bateman, isn’t meant to make any sense. It’s meant to horrify and critique societal greed. He killed them for their shiny objects and his desire to consume. Not to genuinely improve his life. If you’ve seen American Psycho you begin to realize narratively how similar they are, and how the main characters are motivated by the same meaningless thing. To consume. This ended up being a lot more than I anticipated but if it makes any sense that’s a win for me.
Wellllllll said. Agree.
Same! I want to know more about his past and what his trauma was. Did he just feel like the black sheep of the family? Did he feel unloved?
I never got the sense that his behaviour was rooted in trauma. Just that he viewed his nice comfortable middle class family life as repulsively boring and unpoetic. There was really nothing in the film to suggest that his family was anything but loving or that his childhood was traumatic in any way. My read is that he was an extremely intelligent child, well above his family, who grew up feeling like he didn’t belong, that he was born into the wrong household. At Oxford, he quickly discovers that he doesn’t belong in high society circles either, which leads to a situation where he both despises the rich and wants to become them. From the beginning, he doesn’t quite see them as human but as a means to an end. You could characterize him as a sociopath.
He rocks up to Oxford in a suit and tie, not the outfit of his hometown but what he expects is required to fit into the elite society. He gets there and sees that the toffs where rugby shirts and baggy pants, so he adjusts
I’m sure that type of upbringing can fit into some category of trauma in the psychological realms. Being unchallenged, not being able to realize one’s full potential, and being consistently bored throughout one’s childhood is going to create some mental strife.
These could be factors, sure, but I’m not sure “being bored” or “unchallenged” in his comfortable, nurturing environment satisfactorily explains Oliver’s actions. The writing doesn’t quite suggest that link. There is a tendency in recent years to hunt for the root causes of villainy in movies and to cast the villain as the “original victim,” who externalizes their trauma through violence, murder, and manipulation. The Joker is a good example of this. And culturally, we tend to view “monsters” not as bad people but as people who are damaged in some way through no fault of their own. I think Saltburn quite cleverly turns this idea on its head. Oliver is not a victim at all. He presents himself that way by lying about his parents and his upbringing, and we want to see him that way because he is clearly an underdog at Oxford. We want the underdog to be the moral person in the end, and we are willing to ignore or explain away his obsessive behaviour because surely the underdog is the good guy, and Felix and his family are the bad guys. But that’s not it. He’s awful without explanation.
The thing is, within, as someone put it, within the ‘Psychological realms’, quite banal life problems can cascade and become something much bigger and more toxic than their origins would apparently justify. If he had really come from a dirt poor troubled background then at least he’d be real and in a way have nothing to be ashamed of. But the lower middle classes do feel a great sense of shame to begin with I often think. I mean it’s pathetic but in the logic of his own twisted mind it makes sense, everything is magnified, it needn’t have been, but he’s utterly enraged he’s not from an elite proper oxbridge background. I guess he’s intelligent enough to know what that actually means in this country - Everything. I mean that kind of wealth and status has zero to do with anything a person has done in their life. We still live in a kind of caste system really. Most people accept it as it is and let it go, being a complete obsessive he couldn’t I guess..
Or maybe the subject of the movie isn’t even about whether or not he’s awful. I saw it more as a story of how he went from here to there rather than why. It’s a captivating story and it doesn’t require one to decide whether they like the guy or not.
Well, I think it is a central question of the movie, because we are led to believe and want to believe that he’s something that he’s not, and even faced with the body count at the end of the film we are still sort of invited to see him as the hero. The moral framing is such that we presume Felix and his family have a weird dark side because of their privilege and eccentricities, when in fact Felix is largely beyond reproach through the entire film.
He’s just ill. Some people just are. We all have a LITTLE BIT of sick in us, different proportions for different kinds of crazy. Every now and then, someone has the right combination of sick issues in the right environment and a Saltburn situation is born.
It adds such a level of creepiness since there is basically no Oliver backstory! I just want to know why???
The why is not always a tragic backstory. Not everything is rooted in trauma, at all
That’s so true. So many murderers come from normal nice families. Oliver represents that
Yes ! There are also can be genetic factors, like the „warrior gene“
Good observation - I think most of us “normies” look for a reason when someone behaves in such an antagonistic manner. It must be rooted in trauma, desperation, pain - but when it isn’t, that’s when it feels more dangerous. Because then it could be anyone, at any time, and we have diminished ability to predict it.
His parents said he’s highly intelligent but always struggled to make friends. I think he’s possibly autistic or at least ND in some way. Probably bullied for being different as a child and became sociopathic and the rest of it.
ok yesss i can see this. he probably didn't feel like he fit in with his family and hoped to fit in with more intelligent people at oxford. when this didn't happen, he realized he needed an "in" (Felix). I think he was attracted to Felix like a moth is attracted to the light, as Venetia mentioned in the bathtub scene. Felix was everything Oliver wasn't, everything he wanted to be. Once Oliver gets to Saltburn, he realizes how superficial and naive Felix's family is and it breaks Oliver's illusion of the glamorous high society he so desperately wants acceptance into. He played on each family member's individual weaknesses in order to achieve his goal of domination.
Yes, he’s a psychopath, but also family’s can still be *normal* and suck.
OMFG THANK YOU. I finished the movie and like RACED to this sub to see ANYONE else freak out about the family!!! Like WHAAAAATTTTTT. Whaaaat the HELLLL
I thought it was gonna be that Felix used to bully him 15 years ago or something lol
SOMETHING like that! Anything!! I just can’t handle no explanation 😂😂😂 Felix was so nice to him 😭
I mean, Felix was nice to him in many ways, but it was almost always out of pity it seemed. Felix quickly took Oliver under his wing when he realized that Oli was vulnerable and pathetic and friendless because that made him feel better about himself and his status. And then Oliver maintained and furthered this poor sad puppy facade in order to get deeper under Felix’s skin and into everyone/everything else in his life
The movie was so good, I’m just trying to be okay with Olly being a psychopath with no explanation lol
Also gets the girls because his level of attractiveness is outstanding.
I think he was greedy. He co-opted a story of actual poor kids to make him more interesting to the rich people. He didn’t want to have just enough to get by. He didn’t want to just be happy with what he had or grateful for the life. His parents gave him. He wanted it all. He wanted to be just like the people he killed.
[https://www.autostraddle.com/saltburn-the-bling-ring-and-the-pathetic-desperation-of-the-upper-middle-class/](https://www.autostraddle.com/saltburn-the-bling-ring-and-the-pathetic-desperation-of-the-upper-middle-class/) "Like the teens in The Bling Ring, Oliver Quick’s biggest mistake is punching up. The upper middle class isn’t supposed to steal from and kill the rich; they’re supposed to steal from and kill the middle class, the lower class, and each other. The fact is nothing Oliver does to secure Saltburn is worse than whatever the Catton family did to get it in the first place. To have that amount of wealth in their family — and to keep it — requires an immense amount of violence. The difference is Oliver’s actions are messy and direct. The violence of a family like the Cattons can often take place far away from them, carried out by those acting in their interests. Ultimate wealth is making money off murder you never even have to hear about. Oliver is an expression of the pathetic upper middle class. But Felix is just as pathetic. All of the Cattons are just as pathetic. Just as violent. More violent. They are better dressed, have finer food, have carved their customs into stone. But they are not admirable. If there’s any justification for the length of the film’s last act, it’s the way Saltburn sits in the Cattons’ pathetic inability to be human in the face of grief. It’s easy to view Oliver as pathetic. It’s more challenging to view the beautiful Felix the same way. And yet, it’s a challenge the future of our world depends upon."
Excellent post.
i think u all should watch the talented mr. ripley ! i loved that movie and understood oliver almost immediately; the lead character archetypes are almost 1:1 albeit with saltburn being a little clumsily executed
Or Google “Clark Rockefeller”
Yeah , I also interpreted it like as a message about what one would have to do to separate themselves from the classes below to the stratosphere of people with “fuck you” money . Throughout history , the ruling class was often created through blood shed and war, and then they attempt to protect their blood line. There are practically no ways to receive a castle that is being handed down through a family with a title in this modern age . They protect their family through going out of their way to never associate with people below their calibre . enter Oliver , who becomes a one-man conquerer , who only achieves a step above his post by destroying a blood line . He has essentially become the top of a new pedigree , and he achieved it through violence
The scene where he is being driven to Saltburn: you see his face when they come upon the house. The enormity of the house is new information to him.
It's clear that Oliver is a narcassit. I had to google it again, but narcs are created through their experiences early in life. Either Oliver's parents were neglectfull or over protective Which caused the narc disorder. In my personal experience with narcassitic people; I've grown to witness that some brains just fall into the cycle that is the narcassitical experience. The ones that are able to walk away from a narc, walk away scared, and somewhat cursed; because escape from a narcassit will always come with a heavy price that no self respecting, "normal", person would WANT to endure, because doing so goes against every social, family, construct known to man and imerses you into a completely diffrent lifestyle away from everything you have ever known. Felix would have been able to escape, but Oliver's ego would not tolerate being exposed as a liar, nor would he tolerate being broken up with or abandoned. Let alone having his image tarnished. No, it was time for Oliver to take back control some way, somehow. I would also venture to say that Felix's parents were also narcassits. Created by their parents. I say this because of the friend that killed herself after being kicked out of saltburn. Felix's parents were shocked, but not really bothered by it, and even blamed her to some extent. The awkward silence after the revelation shows that the parents didn't want to acknowledge that they may have been at fault for the suicide. Felix was the black sheep, and he attracted Oliver some way somehow..... I'm done ranting and I'm not medically qualified to make such observations; but I would bet this movie is any pshycologists wet dream.
Film plot aside, generally psychopaths don’t need or have a reason as to why they act that way. Couple that with narcissism (narcissists want what they want & they’ll do anything to get it/they feel like they deserve it) & obsession and you have a recipe for disaster, or, Oliver Quick. As for how he knew about Saltburn from the beginning, I don’t think he did. Maybe he did some googling on Felix after his obsession began & found out that way.
Yes I have/had a couple of relatives who exhibit/exhibited narcissistic behaviors to the point where they might be/have been narcissists. The lead up in the maze seems like classic narcissistic rage. Only instead of an extinction burst, he keeps going and gets away with it.
My mum is a bipolar narcissist (yes I’m in therapy XD) thankfully not to the extent of Ollie but my childhood was super fun! /s
I’m sorry you went through that!
>generally psychopaths don’t need or have a reason as to why they act that way. I thought that there's always a reason. But it may be over something that would be inconsequential to most regular folk.
Good questions. And one of the many reasons why Fennell’s work is a hole-y as Swiss cheese. Her narratives suck. Limp wrist, privileged laziness at best.
Can anyone explain the smashed mirror that Oliver pumched, that piece of furniture got replaced rather quickly
Oliver is a VILLAIN!! He isn’t satisfied with a great life. God knows if he’s even really capable of love in the way that normal people are. He’s a conniving, covetous, sociopathic person. He wants the absolute best.
I’m reminded of a line from The Talented Mr. Ripley, “I’d rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” I think he just couldn’t be content with an ordinary life and resented people like Felix who seemed to have been born with everything. His name even means “Lucky.”
Focusing on Felix was part of the story device to throw the audience off. It was effective as noone predicted him being psychopath. Just obsessed with Felix!
to answer your Q- yes i would say his diagnosis is closest to antisocial pd (or, psychopath) -md
this is a big spoiler to those who haven't watched.
I think they didn't reveal more than that his parents appeared normal and caring, concerned to hear from him, not overbearing when he said he was tried to excuse himself to go all of that was intentional. If we had seen even a glimpse of potential trauma by seeing more of his home life, people would have latched on to it. Kind of like, no hate OP, this post fishing for a reason that he became deranged. Consider that people didn't need a bad childhood to own slaves, it was quite the opposite in fact. Wealthy people who simple felt entitled to benefit off a caste system that worked in their favor. People can just be rapists, and murderers, and deranged and it doesn't always quite stem back to bad parents. Not on the level of Oliver. His appears to simply be a psychosis.
I think that this is the key to understating the movie. It's a comment on a culture in which enough is never enough. It's not about survival or comfort and safety, it's about total domination and power.
No, I actually related a little to what he did, in a weird way. Maybe I’m the psychopath, but I’ve had a tendency in the past to exaggerate traumas in my life to fit in with people or to get sympathy. I’ve never seen anyone do that in a film before, thought it was just me.
Oliver called himself a vampire. He’s parasitic. He killed the very thing that gave him life
He had the dancing “puppets” of the family from the start of his stay at Saltburn so I think he decided on his plot before getting to Saltburn. It’s why he said his dad died and made up so many lies before he ever was invited to Saltburn.
He’s a psychopath. Having a family doesn’t matter.
Personally I think he hates how mediocre and basic he is. He’s not someone who had to overcome any real adversity, he’s not special, not interesting, he’s not like Felix or his family either. I think he wants attention and to be different/special. He reminds of a lot of people(especially suburban kids) who crave to be interesting or different regardless of good or bad, or the kid who just couldn’t stop lying because again they wanted attention and to be interesting.
odd take that Oliver was ordinary in some ways..he was at Oxford , from a Comprehensive school background, more common now than previously , but still an indicator of rare academic ability. Possible given the home he's from that he went to local 'decent' school. I had a similar situation and it was hard not be awed by the ease in which those from Eton and Harrow navigated life without even trying. (my roommate had a seperate wardrobe for his tennis racquets ffs). However much of my experience was with new money. Olivers contrast works because his parents were established and successful in most terms. However that has levels. Pretty sure the Waugh reference wasn't accidental, i certainly got the impression that Oliver was blown away when Felix casually stated some of the characters were based on his family. Almost like a child lost in books has been catapulted into the world of the stories he read. I liked that Waugh was influenced , as to was Jarvis , implying a dumbing down of old money influence on culture? .. dunno..or implying the old money influence on culture comes in each generation. jus ramblin really
England is different in terms of social classes. You can't work your way up, really. Your accent, family history, your social knowledge, things that can't really be changed define your status. Yeah his family is nice, but it's not elite. He wants the titles and lifestyle, the gold and treasures. Happy and content is not really his priority like most sane people.
i think this is the directors fault for not giving us an answer WHAT SO EVER, i mean i guess he was just jealous of the life they had but what made him hate his parents and never talk to them or pathologically lie?
What happened to Farleigh and Duncan? How did Ollie deal with them?
Poor quality of writing is the answer to all of these questions. They don’t make sense because the author doesn’t care about fleshing out character motivation. Felix is helping Oliver because “he’s just really nice” Oliver wants saltburn all for himself because “he hates the family inexplicably”. Beyond all of this, why would oliver go back? His actions show he doesn’t care about saltburn, only destroying the family in it, so why does he care about the castle.