Flasz On Film

With Saltburn still playing in cinemas and what I can only expect a serious awards push coming both for its writer-director Emerald Fennell and at least a few cast members – I will be surprised if Rosamund Pike and Barry Keoghan do not enter the race for accolades on the back of their performances – I continue to be gobsmacked at just how uproarious the seemingly ceaseless standing ovation for this movie is. In fact, I was just as discombobulated at the sight of the critical acclaim ladled at the feet of Fennell’s previous outing Promising Young Woman, which earned her a screenwriting Oscar. Now, I don’t think I’ve ever written a bona fide hit piece, but something tells me I’m about to – despite my best intentions to keep my decorum and remain polite – because I simply fail to understand why these two films are held to such high standards.  

Chances are that I am of course totally wrong because I seem to represent a frighteningly minuscule minority of filmgoers who out-and-out despised both Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, but just because I seem to be alone here in my trench doesn’t mean I should just go home. After all, I continue to hold fast to my frequently derided beliefs that Paddington movies are stunningly overrated. I’m not going to apologize for honesty, let alone change my mind because it is simply easier to toe the Film Twitter line and get on the bandwagon with a throng of mindless zombies regurgitating their poorly-studied opinions, one of which is that Fennell’s movies are works of pure storytelling genius that somehow reflects the current societal mores and feeds into the culture wars. And as funny as it may be to observe from the sidelines how both films garner nearly universal acclaim – despite being occasionally described as divisive on the back of an odd negative review in the figurative ocean of praise – I don’t think I can abide by that any longer. Not after having sat through Saltburn, all 131 minutes of it, and emerging into the world where, similarly to how Promising Young Woman was carried on the shoulders of zealots chanting “Kill all men!”, everyone seems to think Fennell’s movie is either a nuanced study of desire, a political call to arms aimed at the rich we must eat right this second, or both. While in fact, it is neither.  

In a way, I feel this filmmaker is owed a handshake or at least a Mars bar in recognition of the immense feat of strength she completed because she successfully convinced the world not only that she somehow writes what she knows, but also that she writes in a way that many viewers find weirdly relatable, because they simply fail to realize how manufactured, convenient and shamelessly cliché it all is. She has somehow cast a magic spell on the world of Film Twitter- and Letterboxd-dwelling cineastes who see her work as contributing to the zeitgeist because – again, somehow – these stories reflect back at the viewers exactly what they want to hear. That all men are pigs and need to be taken care of and that the rich must be eaten right this minute.

However, nobody seems to notice that these populist slogans – such as they are – may not be backed by anything concrete and that they may have in fact originated in an intellectual ivory tower. Now, it wouldn’t be the first time this happened. In fact, it happens all the time, but it boggles the mind nonetheless. Just like Donald Trump, who is a billionaire awash in privilege, convinced America in 2016 he was a man of the people, Fennell’s movies speak to Film Twitter cinephiles who are more than happy to adopt them, both Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, as parts of their personalities without realizing they may have fallen for cinematic automatons, literal tin men engineered to elicit a response but who possess no personality whatsoever. They say what you what to hear, they express what you want to see expressed. And I fear it might be because the mind who concocted those movies conjured them not on the back of a life philosophy cultivated by organic experience, but rather on the basis of literary wishful thinking of the kind a novelist in the olden days would find familiar.  

There is a difference between an adventure novel written by someone who at least took a trip to the foreign land they then used as a setting for their narratives and someone who never bothered to step outside of their ivory tower and simply imagined it all. Now, this by no means indicates it cannot be done because some writers do have vivid enough imagination to pull this off successfully, but it definitely helps. And in the current zeitgeist where storytellers are not only encouraged to write what they know but are actively scolded if they make stuff up and pretend they have experienced things they simply have not, Fennell’s movies just fly under the radar and continue to resonate with audiences as thematically timely. Why? 

Don’t you people see these movies are the equivalent of a champagne socialist who opines on the struggles of the working class from a safe distance and who talks a big game about charity while securely sequestered from the smell of homeless people and the clamouring of their out-of-tune violins by the luxurious sound-proofing courtesy of their Bentleys? These films send thoughts and prayers. I bet you money if Saltburn and Promising Young Woman were people, they would contribute to the festival of cringe that was the medley of celebrities butchering John Lennon a few years back. These movies tell us we are all in this together in a video recorded in their expansive mansions in Beverly Hills. And I’m not dumb enough to think they somehow understand me, let alone speak on my behalf, because they “poored up” and chose to wear a hoodie in their TikTok videos hoping mindless Zoomers would be tricked into thinking they are one of them.

In fact, it’s out on display in Saltburn alone. Oliver is the exact epitome of what I’m talking about. He’s an upper middle-class shyster who pretends to be poor to (a) blend in with the plebs like you and me and (b) to charm his way into the lives of people who are too rich for you to comprehend just how rich they are. I mean, let’s be serious. Am I to believe that the filmmaker, who I bet wants us to identify with Oliver and it is not unlikely she does too, somehow knows what it’s like to be an upstart or to have to pull yourself by your bootstraps because you have literally nothing else to cling onto in your life? I don’t think so.  

Look, it’s undeniable that Fennell has had a stunning career long before she transitioned into writing and directing features. Good on her. It’s honestly great to see anyone make something of their lives and to build a career, because it’s insanely hard to make it in any field, let alone in entertainment. But let’s not pretend she’s Oliver Twist either and that her stories are in any way rooted in anything but privilege. Sofia Coppola continues to see criticism of her privileged upbringing hurled at her every time she makes a movie. And in fact, I don’t think she’s pretending to be anything but. Instead, she tells stories rooted exactly in what she knows, which is what makes her movies so darn interesting, compelling and honest. But somehow Emerald Fennell has evaded this fate and continues to peddle those populist stories about rich people pretending to be poor to convince the uber-rich to let them into their mansions so that they could drink semen out of their bathtubs and dance naked on their mahogany floors.  

I wonder what would happen if I had the audacity to write a novel about the life of a Syrian refugee without ever speaking to one, let alone without having any such experiences myself. Think how great that book would be if I just locked myself in a room and imagined everything. I think it would be easily described in Cockney rhyming slang as “pony and trap”, if you know what I mean. So, why do people fall for movies like Saltburn and Promising Young Woman? They are nothing more than works of champagne second-hand proletariat engineered out of pure red meat Film Twitter denizens would gorge on like London Zoo lions during feeding time. Just like Oliver Quick, they are hollow cinematic fraudsters telling us what we want to hear while climbing to the apex of the world. And I think it’s time you all woke up. These are not masterpieces. They don’t even speak to you or for you. Fennell’s movies are cynically charming like Mr. Ripley, but they have nothing else to offer apart from their purely performative second-hand wrath.