The following article contains major spoilers for the ending of Saltburn.
Like any grand feast worth the tux rental, Saltburn leaves the best until last. After two hours of murder, suicide and grave-shagging, the final scene finds Barry Keoghan's impish Oliver — once written off as an alluring oddity by the aristocrats who took him under their wing — reigning triumphant over the grand halls of Saltburn estate. One by one Oliver has seduced, and subsequently offed, the previous landlords, with nowt to remember them but pond stones. He's thriving. Living.
How better to illustrate his nigh-on total victory than with a dance? Oh, and he's stark naked, strutting, appropriately, to Sophie Ellis-Bextor's “Murder on the Dancefloor.”
It's a striking scene. And impressive on multiple levels: as a technical feat of camerawork, as a piece of choreography, and indeed for Keoghan's vulnerability. He's very much on full display. The result isn't far off what Emerald Fennell, the director of Saltburn, always had in mind for her finale — though the dance was the product of mid-shoot inspiration.
“It was always going to be a walk, the exact inverse of Felix's tour [earlier in the film],” Fennell tells GQ. “But a naked walk. And then about halfway through filming, I just felt it wouldn't have the evil glee. It had to be an act of desecration, an act of territory taking. It's ownership. ‘This is fucking mine. I do whatever I want.’"
There are caveats, of course. Loose ends left untied. Hawklike butler Duncan (Paul Rhys) can't be glad that his long-standing employers have all mysteriously kicked the bucket, and Farleigh's (Archie Madekwe) is still out there, a fellow interloper who will no doubt be back to sniff around the spoils. “It's not going to be, like, the forever victory. It's sort of a depressing victory, even for Oliver,” Fennell explains. “But in that moment, we need to love him. I like the audience to be complicit.”
The scene was shot on a closed set in the halls of the stately manor standing in for Saltburn. Being an intimate shoot, a barebones crew was assembled, as you might now for a sex scene: Fennell, cinematographer Linus Sandgren, choreographer Polly Bennett, intimacy coordinator Miriam Lucia, the cameraman and sound operator. “It was very complicated because it's one long shot. Every window needed to be lit in a way that you couldn't see any of the rigging, or the lighting [apparatus],” Fennell says. “We had to turn off the music in the last room, turn on the music in the next room, because otherwise you get a lag. So everyone was doing all of this stuff, but blind.”
The scene deploys a steady, graceful camera movement, in parallel to that used for the second-act scene in which Felix (Jacob Elordi) introduces Oliver to the house. Framing this shot — and keeping it well-framed — with the elaborate choreography was a challenge. “Getting the exact, right distance, so that the camera feels like it's following him, not anticipating his moves, is hard when it's a bit of choreography,” Fennell explains. “You often get too close, or too far away, and then it's fucked, you have to start again. And for Barry, from a performance point of view, he has to make it feel easy, and cool, and you know, to be totally relaxed about being naked in a huge house.”
It took 11 takes — the last one of which they used — to nail the sequence. Oh, but when it did. “You could hear the screams of joy coming from everywhere in the house. Everyone was so thrilled,” Fennell says. “And I think we all knew, 'cause Barry was like, ‘Have you seen this!?’ He wanted to show everyone, because he's fucking brilliant. And he's so cool. Not that it wouldn't have been cool if he didn't feel that way, I should say. But you're looking to make something that feels special, which hits you physically. And it does.”
Were there any other endings in mind? “No, no, because I don't really work like that,” Fennell says. In Oliver's perfect world, however, Fennell feels it would've gone quite differently. “I think it's a happy ending, [but] the happiest ending [for Oliver] would of course be with him and Felix married, living there together,” she continues. “I think that in his mind, and in my mind, that would be the dream. That dream is not possible. So, therefore, this is the best of a bad bunch of options.”
Saltburn is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Enjoyed the film? Here's what to watch next.
