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#emerald fennel is a genius idc
aikastugeek · 3 months
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Ok so idk how long this is gonna be and I'm gonna try to keep it as coherent and concise as possible. SALTBURN IS NOT A CLASS COMMENTARY MOVIE, IT IS A MOVIE ABOUT YEARNING AND DESIRE. I don't know how many times I have to say this but it seems that the biggest problem that people have with the movie is that it's a terrible class commentary and has nothing real to say about it. And I would totally agree if that's what the movie was about. I've often seen people compare it to Parasite which is crazy to me. While in a general sense it has a similar premise to parasite (an amazing movie that deserves all its awards) because it has to do with someone worming their way into a rich family the comparisons stop there. Noting that Oliver himself has enough money to go to Oxford without a scholarship I think it's safe to say he didn't need their money. Oliver never cared about the house until he killed Felix. He started trying to get close to felix even before he knew about saltburn. When Felix was introducing the house to us and we see it through Oliver's eyes we are only focusing on Felix and nothing else. And while yes the Catton family is super rich that's a part of the dream that is Felix. He's super tall, super handsome, super nice, and super rich. He is everything anyone would ever want that's why he's so shiny so from any perspective we can understand why Oliver would want to be around him and mixed with his obviously obsessive nature of course he's gonna do anything to win Felix. Until Felix died there wasn't a real emphasis on the house itself just how grand it is but we don't see the happy montage in the house it's outside. And Oliver ingesting the fluids of the family is supposed to show just how far he's willing to go what he's willing to do just to be around Felix. And most importantly Oliver is shown to be a hella unreliable narrator so you can't exactly believe him when he says that this was all some master plan of his I mean he's not even telling the story to anybody. Elspeth probably can not hear him he's talking to himself because that's who he's trying to convince. He's trying to convince himself that killing Felix was all part of some plan to get saltburn because of his massive regret. After Felix's death he's seen sobbing in the church and sobbing on his grave wanting to be as close as possible to his lost love. And even when he says he hated Felix the montages that we see is not him being menacing or Felix being terrible it's Oliver weeping whenever he felt pushed away from Felix. And this misinterpretation bothers me so much because it messes with what the movie's about. It's not a commentary, or a story with a sweeping moral it's pure entertainment and hedonism. And this sort of misinterpretation paints the creator in a bad light because everyone is going around saying she can't write because people didn't understand the point of the story she wrote. I've watched many interviews of her talking about the movie and you can with even just one interview that she never meant it to be a class commentary but people will never give women the benefit of the doubt. But anyway that's all, I could really make a whole long ass essay about the misinterpretation of saltburn but I'll leave it as a long post and go.
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