Saltburn? Anybody?

Anybody watched Saltburn?

                                                         

Opinions vary. 

                                                   

Beautifully shot, great performances but not for me.  It didn’t shock me. I saw the ending coming from half way in.  And, how did he get away with any of that. They do have police in England.

I just didn’t like it. And why was that?

Because? Because I didn’t like any of them.

None of them.

Not one.

I didn’t care.

Scenery was good though.

Thinking of great characters. We admired Clarice Starling so much, equally we wanted Hannibal to get away.

Tom Ripley? Should be totally unlikeable, but we kind of ‘get him’.

                                                       

I read one book while on holiday recently, one that I didn’t put on the list. It was a best seller and I hated it. But also enjoyed it. It was thought provoking and at the same time complete rubbish.

Watching Saltburn while doing some accounts, that book came back to me for some analysis.

People move out a house very quickly. As if a secret has been exposed, they pack up and they go.

         

                                           

The next people buy the house very cheaply and it all cascades downwards from there. You get the drift.

It was all about people wanting money. Women letting their husbands work themselves to death for money. Never thought about getting a job themselves though, no. Because the women in the street didn’t work.  They drank coffee and designed their own kitchens for dinner parties that they got companies in to cater for.

And then, the lady of the house breaks the secret of why the previous owner left. They go to the coffee shop. 

The big reveal, in real life would have been dealt with a wee apology.

Four hundred pages…. But like I said, it was a best seller. Lots of people really liked it but reading the reviews on Amazon? The main complaint was that the characters were so unlikable.

Then, I was at a proper dinner part a couple of weeks ago, one where we had to retire to the drawing room etc. The hostess reads a lot. She started talking about the book that she had just finished… it was the latest one by the same author. Out hostess had enjoyed it but… thought all the characters were totally unlikable…. And was really just reading in the hope that there was some major incident where all the main players could wiped out, like an explosion, a train wreck. 

I guess, in my head, I had read the previous novel playing a kind of 1970’s disaster movie in my head. Did Steve McQueen survive putting the fire out? Does Charlton Heston climb in the window of the plane at 37 000 feet? Did he survive the white polo neck jumper? Did Fred Astaire toupee  make it down to the ground? Was Fred still underneath it at the time?

Nobody did die in the end of that book.

Unfortunately. Oh, and nobody died at the start of it either. It was much more mundane than that, not really worth the angst.

The characters do live in the writer's head for a long time. Twenty years I had Anderson and Costello wittering on in my ears. Anderson I liked. I think I could rely on him to get the story to where it needed to be and solve the crime. Costello annoyed me as much as she annoyed everybody else but she was, by far and away, the more popular character with the readers.

And the new series. Christine, the ex ballet dancer ( grew too tall), is my favourite character, she even decks somebody in the new book if it escapes the editor's red pen. But she decks an annoying man in the name of feminism so that’s okay. Or is it? The red pen will guide me.

BUT, the favourite character, as per the editorial crew and the ‘fans’  is Craigo, small, annoying, a bit like Columbo without the brains. He’s balding, off the wall, never really been promoted, lives on a working farm and probably smell of cow pooh.

But, he’s good as his job. So was Costello.

And, unconstrained by leadership, they get the best lines.