‘Saltburn’s Clumsy, Complicated Ending, Explained

An explanatory montage and an eat-the-rich (or is it be-the-rich?) message muddle Emerald Fennell’s cinematic bathwater.
Photo: MGM and Amazon Studios

Warning: Spoilers follow for Saltburn.

The sample size is small, but based on Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, filmmaker Emerald Fennell loves an outrageous, montage-heavy ending. In 2020’s Promising Young Woman, Cassie’s plan to get revenge against her former classmates who raped her best friend and destroyed their lives endures from beyond her grave, with a series of text messages and a package full of evidence leading to the arrest of the guilty men after they murder Cassie and burn her body. Saltburn takes that death count and multiplies it, with anti-hero Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) pulling off a class-warfare coup, a series of murders, and an elaborate nude-dance sequence in the mansion he’s swiped from the aristocratic family he claims to have loved and hated in equal measure. How did Saltburn get there — and does its final 20 or so minutes feel cathartic or clumsy? Let’s discuss!

Saltburn starts off with Oliver seemingly being interviewed about Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), the classmate with whom he had a Tom Ripley/Dickie Greenleaf type relationship. From the beginning, Oliver has a real scorn toward women (“Christ, the girls. It was embarrassing, really”) and somewhat contradicts himself when trying to explain how he regarded Felix: “I wasn’t in love with him, although everyone thought I was … I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. But was I in love with him?” The question of what Oliver actually felt for Felix then becomes the main lens through which we view the events of the film, which start in earnest in 2006, when the two are first-year college-mates at Oxford.

Felix is a scholarship kid ignored by his mostly posh peers, and it doesn’t help that he’s kind of weird — standoffish, defensive, and obviously a little besotted with the popular Felix, on whom he spies every chance he gets. But when Oliver comes to Felix’s aid by lending him his bike when Felix’s is busted, he gets invited into Felix’s inner circle. The two become close quickly, with Felix throwing out “I love you’s,” taking pity on Oliver’s comparatively low finances and his poor relationship with his mentally ill, drug-addicted parents, and gently mocking Oliver’s stiff personality and overly accommodating deference. After Oliver’s father dies and Oliver says he’ll never go home again, Felix invites him to vacation with him at his family estate, Saltburn. “Just be yourself; they’ll love you,” Felix says, and so Oliver gets folded into the Cattons.

Do they love him? Not immediately! Felix’s cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), whose education is funded by Felix’s father, Sir James (Richard E….