Get Movies About Rich People Or Die Trying

I didn’t intend to make a double feature yesterday of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and Saltburn, but they have a few things in common. They’re both about normal people1 trying to exist in a world of clueless over-privileged people. And they both have interpretations that I’d assumed were patently obvious, but apparently weren’t.

Saltburn

After I complained that the plot and ideas in Saltburn were so clearly spelled out that it went beyond frustrating into insulting, I went online looking for an image for the post. And I saw multiple essays with takes on the movie that were so different from mine that it felt as if we’d been watching entirely different movies. The only thing that reassured me that we were in fact talking about the same movie was that they all mentioned drinking spoogey bath water.

Seeing so many different interpretations, even ones that I completely disagree with, gave me a little bit more respect for Saltburn having more ambiguity than I’d given it credit for. And it made me think more about what it means to “get” a movie, specifically the distinction between getting the plot and coming to a conclusion about what it “means.”

It didn’t save the movie for me. I still don’t like the ending, since it presented a series of quick-fire flashbacks to suggest some intricate Kaiser Soze web of deceit that was being spun the whole time and you didn’t even realize! Even though I’d already suspected as much in the first twenty minutes, and had it already confirmed by the halfway point.

It’s possible that I read mention of The Talented Mr Ripley2 without remembering it, and that planted the idea in my head. But by the time Oliver was fingering a young woman he’d just been told had severe self-esteem issues, I thought it was all but explicit. Later, when he’s sexually assaulting the bitchy cousin, it was clear that the masks were off, and the movie had already given away the last of its secrets.

Maybe there was supposed to be an ambiguity as to when exactly Oliver’s machinations started? The idea that his crush/obsession, and his desire to be part of the “in crowd,” had sucked him into this world of careless privilege, and it had corrupted him? If that were the case, then I think the movie would’ve been much stronger had it left all of that ambiguous.

And I think it might’ve avoided the recurring complaint that Saltburn “doesn’t say much of anything,” since spelling out everything at the end reduces it to an empty-feeling thriller with a too-obvious “twist.” Every explanation puts more emphasis on the plot and takes it away from the more interesting part, the characters.

That’s where there’s room for more interesting and different interpretations. I read one essay that saw Felix as an example of everything that’s wrong with the rich elite: completely self-absorbed and thoughtless, presenting himself as a friend while constantly subjecting Oliver to micro-aggressions about being poorer. I think that interpretation is directly contradicted by stuff that happens in the movie, but I also think it’s a good illustration of the ideas the movie plays with: how much of the class divide is the result of what people project onto the rich and beautiful about their own prejudices or insecurities.

Another essay was all about the reveal of Oliver coming from an “upper middle class” background3, turning it into a story about how capitalism and class divides create a situation where people can never have enough. The family in Saltburn never wants for anything, but every person below that level of wealth and privilege is trapped in a society that demands that they always aspire to having more.

I don’t agree with everything in that take, but I do like that it lines up with what I believe is the most interesting thing about Saltburn: it flips the story from a satire about the excessive lifestyle of the idle rich, into a satire about the people who aspire to that lifestyle. We’re so used to seeing the former — even Richard E Grant plays the patriarch of a more cartoonishly evil and fake-compassionate family in Death of a Unicorn — that it’s impossible for some people to read this movie as anything but that. But I think that the one place where the movie does preserve some ambiguity is by leaving it open to interpretation what you think of the Catton family. Do you envy them, hate them, pity them, or some combination of the three?

One thing that’s probably good to keep in mind: when you’re seeing a mainstream Hollywood movie about “regular people,” you should be a little bit suspicious. “Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us!” has been an essential part of movie marketing for at least a century, even though being a recognizable part of a movie automatically bumps you up a tax bracket. No, not everyone working in movies is super-rich, but if you’re doing a press tour, you’re almost certainly living in a sphere of influence (if not wealth) that gives you more in common with the idle rich who are the targets of the satire, not the regular people who are often the protagonists.

I have to wonder if that’s a key element of the personal criticisms of Emerald Fennell’s movies. For an audience that’s been trained that it’s always okay to “punch up,” then being in a social and professional circle that also contains people like Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie might seem like open season to discredit anything you have to say. Especially in a movie like Saltburn, which makes the middle-class guy the villain — or at least anti-hero, based on how much you hate the core family and rich people in general — and leaves some room for sympathy for the core family.

Personally, I take the idea of having sympathy for the Cattons, and interpreting their attempts at kindness as genuine, as kind of a take on the serenity prayer. It doesn’t excuse them or the system that keeps them rich or powerful; it just asks what part of that is something you can control? Dismantling a system vs sticking it to the rich guys are really two separate questions, and ones that are especially relevant now. The part that you actually have immediate control over is simpler: they’re so far out of your sphere that they don’t even think about the lives of regular people in anything but the most abstract terms.

Shaking your tiny fist at them isn’t going to accomplish much of anything, and it certainly won’t ever be seen by them. So what does being envious of them, or hating them, do to you?

Ready or Not: Here I Come

That makes it an unintentional double feature with Ready or Not 2, another movie about regular people getting pulled into the world of the cluelessly corrupt rich and powerful.

These movies are not multi-layered or particularly nuanced. Even deliberately so. At the core of both of the Ready or Not movies is the visceral satisfaction of seeing a relatable person4 murdering a bunch of rich assholes.

The bulk of the comedy of the movie comes from the fact that they are so evil, so powerful, and so clueless. Both movies have multiple gags about how these characters are so pampered and yet so ruthless that they’re perfectly willing to murder someone, but have no idea how to actually use the weapons. Ready or Not 2 cleverly sets the tone at the beginning, with David Cronenberg as a ludicrously rich patriarch so powerful that he can instantly stop a ceaseless conflict with a single phone call.

This is a movie where the bad guys are literally murderous, back-stabbing Satan worshippers; it’s simply unconcerned with nuance. But I think that there is an idea at the core of the sequel that keeps it from floating completely away into silly action-horror-comedy.

For their review of Ready or Not 2 on the Breakfast All Day channel, Christy Lemire and Alonso Duralde put their disappointed faces in the thumbnail, which made me assume that they hated it. But watching the review, I actually agreed with most of their points. The sequel doesn’t need to exist, it’s basically just an excuse to make more Ready or Not, and there’s a severe tonal whiplash between scenes brutally beating the hell out of Kathryn Newton’s character being intercut with a slapstick fight between two women in wedding dresses in a different room. I agree with all of that; I just would’ve given it a higher score and put my smiley face in the video review thumbnail.

The point where I disagree, mostly: they called out the scenes between Grace and Faith throughout the movie, rebuilding their relationship from estranged to accusatory to loving, as being another example of that tonal inconsistency. They drag the movie down, it’s the same note repeated over and over, and it seems trite and maudlin for a movie that is otherwise not interested in being either.

I was initially inclined to agree. Especially in the middle, as they keep repeating the same “You abandoned me!” “I had to!” back-and-forth in between action sequences, it felt weird and shallow. Something done more out of obligation than actual effort: look, character development! And especially since the movie goes so hard establishing that these are regular people (they work as a waitress and a hostess, and they came from a foster home), it feels like the filmmakers were afraid they wouldn’t read as relatable enough, even though they’re contrasted against characters so cartoonishly over-privileged that it includes a kid who’s always on his Switch 2 and a guy who’s never seen without a silk bathrobe and a martini.

But I think it’s part of a through-line introduced in the sequel that wasn’t present in the original, and it works in conjunction with a few other moments.

One is the young woman presented as the key rival. She’s from one of the rich houses and was the fiancee of Grace’s husband, before he ditched her, tried to leave his family, and ran off with Grace. She comes in screaming that Grace ruined her life. Grace just responds with “I don’t know who you are!“5

I think it’s a neat twist on how regular Joes vs rich assholes stories typically work, since it’s pretty much always the case — in fiction and in real life — that rich people have so little awareness or consideration for anyone outside their circle that they can absolutely ruin the lives of people they’ve never met. Essentially, as that Mad Men meme says, there’s power in being able to say “I don’t think about you at all.”

Later in the movie, Grace is tempted twice by one of the rich women playing the game. First, she’s told of a secret clause in the game’s rules, where she can be free of the game by marrying into one of the competing families. Faith encourages her to take the deal, but she refuses, eventually explaining that she’d rather die than sell her soul.

Then, after Grace has finally agreed to marry the Supreme Bad Guy Titus in order to save her sister, she’s approached by Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Ursula, who also tries to present herself as a sympathetic ally. She insists that she had no idea just how psychotic Titus was, but by working together, they can control him or at least keep him in check.

It’s kind of Screenwriting 101 to say that Titus and Ursula are presented as a counter-point to Grace and Faith; here’s what a really dysfunctional sibling relationship looks like, and you guys don’t have it nearly that bad. I think it’s a little more interesting that the rich characters are practically incapable of interacting with each other as human beings. The somewhat sympathetic characters in Ready or Not (the brother-in-law and the new husband) were both presented as if they genuinely wanted to get out of the system, but they just lacked the will to actually do it. All of the villains in the sequel are either murderous or trying to find some kind of leverage that gives them more power. They put themselves forward as allies, but only when they have something to gain from it.

Finally, most if not all of the conversations between the sisters are about money as much as family. The main conflict is pretty absurd; no, an 18 year old wouldn’t have been able to take care of a 15 year old, and that practically should have been the end of the argument. But it does emphasize how much the problems of the rich characters are self-created from their own greed, and how many problems just disappear once you have enough money to be comfortable. And here, framed as a question of what you’re willing to give up (your relationship to your family) in order to live comfortably.

Before I go too far making it sound like this is some richly complex and nuanced story, I have to mention that in one scene, Faith says that she saw Grace in a Whole Foods in New York, but didn’t say anything. It’s hard to think of a clearer give-away that a wealthy-enough-not-to-care screenwriter is trying to write about poor people, than describing two struggling young women both shopping in a Whole Foods.6

In any case, I think it all works together to introduce an idea that wasn’t present in the first movie’s more general-purpose “rich people are just the worst” message: how much would you be willing to give up to be super-rich and powerful? Is it worth selling your soul?

Because the Ready or Not movies are both basically clever and stylish cartoons, it’s a question of literally selling your soul. With everything else going on in the sequel, I think that the otherwise-clunky character development between the sisters is part of the through line that makes it figurative as well. Not just rejecting a deal with the devil, because that’s unlikely to happen to most of us. Instead, rejecting all of the ways that envy, greed, and the pursuit of money or power can chip away at your soul in the real world.

Basically, expanding the “I have defeated the rich bastards!” of the first movie into a stronger victory, “I don’t have to even give a damn about the rich bastards, because I have everything I need.”

1
Or at least seemingly normal

2
Which I’ve never read, and have only seen the adaptation with Matt Damon and Jude Law

3
It read to me more as suburban middle class “comfortable,” but the essay stridently asserted that “comfortable” means “rich,” which is weird and unconvincing to me

4
Even if she is movie-star beautiful

5
Or similar. I’m paraphrasing, because the idea is more significant than the exact wording.

6
For non-Americans or the otherwise confused: Whole Foods is a notoriously expensive supermarket.

1 Or at least seemingly normal

2 Which I’ve never read, and have only seen the adaptation with Matt Damon and Jude Law

3 It read to me more as suburban middle class “comfortable,” but the essay stridently asserted that “comfortable” means “rich,” which is weird and unconvincing to me

4 Even if she is movie-star beautiful

5 Or similar. I’m paraphrasing, because the idea is more significant than the exact wording.

6 For non-Americans or the otherwise confused: Whole Foods is a notoriously expensive supermarket.