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The filmmaker Martin Koolhoven has had great success domestically with his Dutch film ‘Winter in Wartime’, which came out in the US in 2011. He received many offers from Hollywood but opted to make “Brimstone,” his first English-language film that was financed internationally. After watching ‘Brimstone’ it is easy to see why American studios sought him out. Koolhoven’s branding is a colder take on the ‘Breaking the Waves’ title frame. Instead of enormous letters proclaiming ‘Lars Von Trier’ with the title underneath, he put ’Koolhoven’s Brimstone’ at the beginning of the film. Additionally, Koolhoven’s style is the epitome of Hollywood-style filmmaking. His movies are filled with over-the-top, action-packed visual spectacles and violence.
You can tell “Brimstone” has large studio polish, but it certainly could not have been financed in Holywood. Like in the wide-open spaces of the 19th century, it is set in two-and-a-half sadomasochistic Western domestic horror films separated into four chapters. Incest is the main theme. The movie stars Guy Pearce as a Dutch immigrant preacher from hell, and Dakota Fanning as his daughter whom he quite literally wants to marry. He considers it God’s will and cites the bible story of Lot and his daughters to prove his point. “Brimstone” is the Dutch version of a good Saturday night at the movies. Even with the chance of the Western setting and name cast, it is unlikely that the movie would have much impact in the US. The movie does suggest though that Koolhoven should think about moving to Holywood. That would do a good job at separating his talent from his pretensions. For “Brimstone” is a lurid grinding piece of religious high trash taking itself far too seriously.
The film starts with a sequence that is, intentionally, a bit puzzling. Fanning, full of quaking courage, is Liz. A frontier wife with a daughter and a stepson. She is also a mute woman who uses sign language to communicate. Everything seems moderately alright until the family attends church services and a new preacher arrives. He is simply The Reverend, and he carries a gruesome scar slashed across his face. His very first, frightening sermon is a boastful declaration that he suffers tremendously. Anyone who dares cross his path will immediately realize the depths of dread that reside waiting to be unleashed. What a lovely fellow.
Pearce, donning an Amishy beard, plays this dark manipulator with an unfathomable Dutch accent while effortlessly smoldering. There’s never any reason to doubt that he’s pure evil, but Pearce makes him out to be a master a man in black with a shred of mystery. During the visit to Liz’s house, he says to her, lingering in the shadows, “I have to punish you.” And punishment, the more violent the better, is the Reverend’s stock in trade. He enjoys locking women’s faces in head-set chastity belts (alarming devices), slaughtering farm animals, brandishing horse whips as a tool of control, and the like. (Another character he possesses also gets strangled in his own intestines) “Brimstone” features two separate scenes in which women have their tongues removed and one of them features a five-year-old girl being bare-backed whipped. While I actively advocate for a director’s unrestricted right to stage whatever he wants, that scene doesn’t sit well, because Koolhoven is not a good enough filmmaker to make a depiction of inflicting such sadistic obscenity convincing.
Even for cinema lovers, there lies a great discrepancy with Frank’s Inferno, as viewers will have to glean joy shadowed beneath a dismal premise and continuously worse progression to the storyline. After episode one titled “Revelation”, the second episode called “Exodus” starts with the 13-year-old runaway Joanna, played by Emilia Jones, arriving at a deserted city only to realize that she’s been taken to a brothel over a saloon. The design of the movie “Brimstone” is revealed as Joanna’s character starts to shape out. Unlike in “Memento”, where the story structure has more of a wacky twist, Koolhoven tells the story in reverse order which is more akin to Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”. This movie commanded attention by persuading the audience to structure the movie’s grand character in their minds while using traces of domestic sexual abuse that lurked somewhere in the past. However, as the Reverend states, instead of gleefully calling it domestic sexual abuse, he casually refers to it as “love”. This bizarre form of grotesque suspense is what fuels the movie with its spark.
The Netherlands might identify more with the theme than other nations do. This is a country that has had more relaxed views on what can delicately be called “youth sexuality” since the 1960s, especially in Amsterdam. The theme of “Brimstone,” if it has any, is that incest is the demon in the closet. The Reverend Pearce, like many sick men, suffers not merely from what he does and the delusions of grandeur that come from exercising his right to free will, but also from the notion that God encourages him to do it. His view is constructed from the stringent and repressing elements of Dutch Christianity. “Brimstone” is the Dutch sexual nightmare horror film Catholics never knew they needed, with the Reverend as some kind of Catholic horror film’s sexually repressed, patriarchal, figurehead of terror. He may not be a supernatural figure, but just like Freddy, he’s coming for you.
“Brimstone” brazenly seems to weave back and forth in time which cuts to a part named “Retribution”, gory and effective as the film may seem, it feels somewhat dull. The film is infamous and notorious for its big interlocked narrative which had the potential to capture an audience but ironically, also misses this mark. As talented as Martin Koolhoven is, “Brimstone” is a rather subpar indie chakra, as it tries to accomplish too much and not get across the core message.
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