Guillermo del Toro Defends ‘Saltburn’

When it comes to “Saltburn,” there seems to be a severe divide between critics. It currently has a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, and only a 61 on Metacritic.

“Saltburn” is seen through the eyes of Barry Keoghan’s Oliver Quick, invited by Felix (Jacob Elordi), his new friend at Oxford, to his family’s summer getaway mansion. The obsession Oliver quickly develops for Felix, not necessarily of the romantic kind, or so he claims as the narrator, is reminiscent of Matt Damon’s portrayal of Tom Ripley.

Much of the criticism about “Saltburn” seems to be about how it's been done before, and that it's not as iconoclastic as Fennell’s previous film, “Promising Young Woman”. There have also been a lot of comparisons to “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” with some implying that Fennell outright rips off that film.

While a lot of hate has been aimed at Saltburn’s ending (which I won’t reveal) there’s also the notion that, much like Fennell’s debut, “Promising Young Woman,” what she’s made here is a film drunk on style, and devoid of substance.

Guillermo del Toro has decided to chime in on the “Saltburn” debate and he’s firmly planted on the positive side:

SALTBURN a really exciting and excited filmmaking piece. I didn't demand of it a moral fable- it was a skillful, audacious and obsessive grotesquerie- a Steadman, a Hogarth- a state of being, remembered by an unreliable narrator- heightened by his memory & desire.

I get why the haters came out in full swing against “Saltburn” after its Telluride premiere in early September, but, for all of its shallow artifice and over the top theatrics, “Saltburn” entertains, in spades. The film’s dreamlike qualities are further enhanced by “La La Land” cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s colourful palettes.

Unfortunately, “Saltburn,” much like “Promising Young Woman,” isn’t subtle. Fennell can’t help herself. There needs to be a grandiose conclusion and she decides to give us another ambitious, but wobbly ending, filled with twists, that convolute instead of provoke. As we learned from “Promising Young Woman,” subtlety is not Fennell’s forte.

And yet, the film mostly works as it revels in the hollowness of human nature. I dug its pessimism and lurid pop fantasies. It all amounts to a guilty pleasure, one filled with these impeccably realized moments that take immense pleasure in orgiastic excess.