2024-02-15 12:59:45
Previously, he was Paul Newman, Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman. Since the 1960s, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a theater association of Harvard students, has announced the title of Man of the Year. This year it was actor Barry Keoghan, who recently impressed in the psychological thriller about social differences and wealth, Saltburn.
As the AP agency writes, the thirty-one-year-old Irishman, known from the films Dunkirk, The Killing of the Sacred Deer or the Fairies of Inisherin, personally came to the American Cambridge, where Harvard University is located, for the award. “I’ve seen people like Paul Newman get this title before. It’s an honor,” he said.
Part of the ceremony, which is organized by the oldest student theater company in the USA, was the handing over of the so-called pudding pot. This tradition dates back to 1795, when the members of the association agreed that everyone would prepare a pot of liquid pudding for a joint meeting.
In recent years, however, the event has had a particularly crazy course, which was confirmed this year as well. According to the AP agency, Keoghan, an amateur boxer, was forced on stage to fight a fist fight with a person in a comically large disguise, then he had to put on a bra or act out a romantic scene, at the end of which he stuck his head in a plate of spaghetti. “Harvard. I immediately feel smarter when I’m here with you,” he remarked.
Finally, the students presented him with a small inflatable bathtub along with the prize. They called it the Baftub Award, which is a pun referring to the most famous Bafta movie statuettes there, and at the same time an allusion to one of the most bent scenes in the film Saltburn. In it, Keoghan’s hero, the ordinary student Oliver, climbs into the bathtub in which his rich friend Felix, played by Jacob Elordi, has previously masturbated, and begins to loudly sip the last drops of draining water.
This part became the subject of debates on social networks shortly after the premiere. Users debated what it meant. “Here, Oliver gives in to his obsession with Felix and tries to figure out what exactly made him so attractive,” the actor explained to GQ.com magazine. “There’s almost a ritualistic aspect to it, physically getting into that tub and touching the bottom with your face,” he pointed out.
Barry Keoghan as Oliver in Saltburn spends his summer holidays at a noble estate. | Photo: Amazon Studios
The scene has already become so popular that a special “Saltburn Bath Scene Water Scented Candle” is now available for purchase on Amazon.
This film takes place at the beginning of the millennium, not in the American Harvard, but in the English Oxford. It tells the story of Oliver, a shy, bespectacled, bookish student who tries in vain to fit in at a prestigious school. As an imaginary elevator to a better social position and property, he uses a charming classmate from an aristocratic family, Felix, who is as popular, rich and privileged as Oliver himself would like.
Oliver’s fixation and love for his friend turns into an obsession. Everything ends when handsome Felix invites him to spend the summer holidays with him at the opulent Saltburn family estate. Oliver begins to subtly put down roots on the estate. The eccentric noble family, which has a butler and treats people like toys, is gradually being dismantled from within.
The satirical film was made by screenwriter and director Emerald Fennell, the author of the Oscar-winning drama A Promising Young Woman. It loosely refers to the novel Return to Brideshead by the English writer Evelyn Waugh from 1945. The film was not well received at first. The Washington Post criticized it as too cheesy and banal, the Vulture.com server wrote about an empty provocation, and the British Guardian newspaper questioned whether Saltburn’s shiny surface was hiding anything at all.
However, shortly before Christmas, the novelty appeared in the video library of Amazon Prime Video and since then it has been stirring up emotions on social networks, especially among younger users, mainly thanks to several spectacular scenes. Which inspired critics to another wave of reflections. For example, a New York Times critic devoted a long article to Saltburn last Friday, in which, in addition to the passage with the bathtub, she also mentions another often-discussed explicit sequence taking place at the grave.
The film Saltburn is in the Amazon Prime Video library with Czech subtitles. | Video: MGM
According to the journalist, the film resonates with younger viewers, among other things, thanks to the casting of Jacob Elordi, the star of the teenage series Euphoria, and the performance of Barry Keoghan. He hides his passionate feelings growing into obsession behind a facade of apparent indifference and feigned naivety, which is reflected in his blue eyes.
His Oliver is actually no simpleton, but a vengeful manipulator who will stop at nothing. At the same time, he is really experiencing the relationship with his friend.
Keoghan was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in Saltburn. “We were both interested in how far one could go,” the director commented on the collaboration with him for GQ magazine. “We didn’t want to shock at all costs. But when you talk about lust and obsession, you have to go so far that it’s hard to watch, because that’s exactly what it feels like,” Emerald Fennell said.
According to the New York Times, the film’s popularity was aided by the use of English singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 dance song Murder on the Dancefloor, which returned to the charts thanks to the Saltburn soundtrack.
An important role in the promotion was played by the Tiktok social network, whose users started organizing themed parties modeled on Saltburn, wearing make-up based on his characters or shooting variations on the final scene, where they present their home to the sounds of Murder on the Dancefloor and metaphorically show how much are – or on the contrary not – rich.
Both representatives of the main roles keep the film in wider awareness. Young actors know how to keep the attention in the age of social media, and so Elordi and Keoghan, for example, at the Los Angeles premiere of Saltburn they almost kissedwhich generated thousands of reactions.
“We’re really good together. We’re friends. We made a movie where we have to kiss. Look at those scenes. You couldn’t play this with someone you’re not comfortable with,” said Keoghan, whose most recent GQ magazine placed on the cover of the January issue.
The Dublin native grew up without a mother. She died of drug addiction when he was 12 years old. Keoghan and his brother went through 13 foster homes before ending up with their grandmother and aunt.
The boy was already interested in films in his childhood and later in the drama club. At the age of eighteen, he got his first role in the Irish TV soap opera Fair City.
The wider public noticed him in 2017, when director Christopher Nolan cast him in the war Dunkirk and Yorgos Lanthimos in the drama The Killing of a Sacred Deer. For his performance in it, Keoghan won the Irish Award for Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, he was already nominated for the British Bafta statuette for the discovery of the year.
Since then, he has acted in a miniseries Chernobyl or the superhero movie Eternals. “As soon as I saw him, I understood that this boy is willing to show everything in him on camera. The good, the bad and the ugly,” said Chloé Zhao, director of Eternals, about him.
So far, Barry Keoghan celebrated the greatest success with the film The Fairies of Inisherin by screenwriter and director Martin McDonagh. It earned him an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award for his performance in a leading role.
The actor, who is being treated for ADHD, a disorder associated with impaired concentration and distraction, does boxing in his spare time. She lives in London, where she is raising a son born at the time of filming Saltburn, adds GQ magazine.
Video: Hit Murder On The Dancefloor z filmu Saltburn
Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 dance hit Murder On The Dancefloor has returned to the charts thanks to Saltburn. | Video: Polydor Records