A movie, a vid

[selenak]

Saltburn: Can't help but assume the pitch for this was "What about a Brideshead Revisited/The Talented Mr. Ripley fusion? As in, Sebastian doesn't bring home Charles Ryder, he brings Tom Ripley, this all takes place near present day, and no one is Catholic!" The cast is great (and gorgeous to look at), though given the last thing I've seen Rosamond Pike in was The Wheel of Time, and most roles I've seen her in have her being the smartest person in most rooms (whether as a villain or a heroine), seeing her as Lady Elsbeth was quite the switch. The biggest difference to its various predecessors is probably this film eshews subtext and goes for main text right along, and also there are fare more bodily fluids of all kinds involved than in anything written by Waugh or Highsmith. (I'm a Farscape veteran, though. You can't scare me, Emerald Fennell!) Oh, and it's noticable that despite the female characters being played by beautiful actresses, it's the men whom the camera positions as objects of desire and objectivies. A lot.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed watching, but I don't think I'll do again, because this is also the kind of story where everyone is awful, and I can enjoy that if it's so well done, but it doesn't hook me for repeats. To be fair: On the scale of Sebastian Flyte to Dickie Greenleaf in the category of golden boys and objects of homoerotic desire, Felix is while not as sympathetic as Sebastian way more sympathetic than Dickie. And while both film adaptions of the first Ripley novel - the one with young Alain Delon as Tom from the 1960s and the one by Minghella with Matt Damon doing the honors - feeling the need to add some sort of punishment - in the former, the film ends with the boat and Dickie's body being found, in the later, he does get away with it but has to kill Petr, i.e. the one person wo loves him as Tom - instead of letting him get away scot free the way Highsmith does in the novel, Saltburn does give Oliver a completely consequence free victory. But it still feels like all tlhe characters are puppets in a very clever and gorgeous puppet play, not emotionally real to me. Hence no rewatch intended.

Sense 8: A new and delightful Lito/Dani/Hernando vid.

Comments

[shadowkat]

If you can find it? The 1981 mini-series is rather good and works as well. Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews were in it - and it kind of rocketed both to stardom.

[likeadeuce]

I have seen pieces of the show -- how I recognized the teddy bear in Saltburn as a reference -- but I'll give the whole thing a shot at some point.

[shadowkat]

I don't think I watched all of it either, just portions. It was in 1981, and I was around 14 or thereabouts. I watched episodes with my parents who loved it, but it didn't really hold my attention back then that much.