In a half-awake moment before getting out of bed, my thoughts shifted to "Saltburn".
Someone (here or on Facebook?) had written that it has a hint of "The Talented Mr. Ripley", and indeed it does.
But this morning, it occurred to me that it has elements of Faulkner in its main character. There are some parallels to Ben Quick, the fire starting manipulator of Faulkner's stories, and Olliver Quick, the murderous manipulator of the film. And there seems to be a nod toward the story line of "The Long, Hot Summer" in that a stranger is introduced into a world that both embraces him and resists him...but he wins.
If this movie had been cast back in the late 1950s, I could easily see Paul Newman as Ben Quick, Joanne Woodward (or better yet, Lee Remick) as Elspeth Catton, Angela Lansbury as Venetia Catton, etc. Of course, nothing like this film could have been made in the late 1950s. The parallel doesn't exist for the patriarch so ably portrayed in "The Long, Hot Summer" by Orson Welles, but Richard E. Grant was quite excellent as Sir James Catton. I am also not sure about Duncan, the butler, but he had a "Lurch"-like quality.
