Watching Saltburn is an experience that has to happen while actively looking for the hints and symbols of Greek mythology while pay attention to the characters growth. Everything has a meaning and everything is telling us from beginning that hell will break loose.
We gotta understand and see the hight difference not as a directing choice for aesthetics but to represent the “difference” between Oliver and Felix family. The cousin and Felix are higher, always looking down on him. Felix being the “golden boy”, “the god”, “Apollo”, who is here to be loved and venerated by everybody. The gift represents Felix giving Oliver a taste of ambrosia, a test of what is to live with money, being part of the high class, he is feeding him/humiliating him by keeping it at hands reach. Same with the cousins that plays a role of constantly humiliating and reminding Oliver that he is a nobody and to remember that him being there is just because the “gods” allows it and that soon will be dispatched.
Clearly Felix close up is to show his sweetness and to depict Oliver’s obsession. How he see him with desire and infatuation that is actually obsession. The fact that Oliver follows him and watches him from outside his window only shows that he is obsessed and not in love. On the second gift, again we see Felix from below, making him superior and godlike, an angelic figure to be venerated.
Besides the obvious reference of blood and vampirism. Oliver is a real vampire not for sucking on blood, but because he is sucking on everyone’s life force, existence, money, and sanity. His first victim, which a transformative event, is Venetia. The young and unstable woman that feeds him secrets while he sucks on her life force. From this scene we know that Oliver’s manipulative era has started.
From this scene which is almost an opening scene of Oliver’s arrival to Saltburn, the director is foreshadowing Oliver’s plan and view of how all Felix’s family is an assemble of puppets, again telling us that Oliver will be pulling the strings as the puppet master.
Finally the labyrinth scene with the Minotaur. We ask in that scene: who is the Minotaur? Who is Perseus? Or better said, who is getting slaughter and who is coming out alive, which we know. Finally the lunch scene when we see all true characters that are left in the dinning room with the courtains closed and the heavy red color that surrounds them is not only their bloody mood but also the symbolism of falling into hell. A symbol of death and distress that has fallen into them even during a beautiful funny day.
Also, let’s not forget that Oliver is not bisexual or at least I don’t consider him that. I see him as a deconstruction of the archetypal character of the femme fatale a character that use everything at their disposal even sex to get their way. Giving a hand job was just a task to get to the cousin’s phone, which was obvious to everybody that he was also in love or infatuated with Felix. also, Oliver might seem that he wanted to fxck Felix but it goes beyond that, Oliver wanted to get under Felix’s skin, suck him up alive, have what Felix has… become Felix. Own Saltburn.
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