saltburn
i went to work today and it turns out the office is fucking closed until next week, so i didn't manage to actually start on anything until 11 or so when i got back home. with half my night taken up by the job, i decided to watch saltburn to fill up the last few hours. i had seen pictures of it earlier and was interested because i love stories about fucked up rich people and extravagance! what's more, it features murder on the dancefloor, the song of one of the most iconic music videos from my childhood.
it was mid. my main impression is that it feels like it's a movie that's trying to comment on wealth class, except it doesn't execute that well since the main character isn't poor he's just an insane freak. but apparently it's not even trying to be that, it's about themes of "excess and obsession". excess is... like, yeah, there's excess, but as with the general wealth class theme, i don't think it works well when you find out halfway the main character is a middle class guy who's just a creepy compulsive liar. if he was actually poor or at least, shown to not be a weirdo loner in the past too, then his actions of killing everyone in this rich family he got close to might be cool. but instead he's just a freakshow.
as for obsession... if they wanted to portray oliver's obsessive love to felix better, it really should've started and ended with him. there was some sort of bookend narrative about oliver loving him, but in the end it was about getting all the wealth and how oliver supposedly knows how to work hard because he's not rich... again that doesn't work well when it's not a story about oliver being poor but just oliver being insane. i think they should've played up his obsession or insanity even more? like have oliver kill everyone else aside from felix, or have him burn down the mansion after he inherits it, i don't fucking know. i don't think it needs to be a story about rich vs poor, but as it is now it just feels like a movie about nothing.
the rich family was a little quirky and crude but felix was literally fine to be honest. it seems the director said she wanted to make people try to sympathize with unlikeable people and well that is very easy to do when the person on the opposing side is some murderous sadistic compulsive liar lmao. i do think the cum bathwater and gravehumping scene went very hard though.
it was a gorgeous movie visually, but i spent the whole time wishing i was watching something else instead.
this is probably the most apt summary of my reaction to the film:
oh, there was also penis. didn't know that was allowed in a R16 film.