Rachel Reviews: Brimstone (dir. Martin Koolhoven)

This review comes with a Dharrsheena warning

I like Westerns. I've had a busy week and wanted some escapism and while scrolling through Amazon Prime, I read the blurb for Brimstone which sounded like a pursuit thriller set in the Wild West. I was thinking landscapes, sharp shooters, horses, tension, some sadness and loss...

Having been put through the wringer for 112 minutes, I was glad that I had been marginally distracted by my knitting which meant that I sometimes had my head lowered towards my work whilst someone's on the screen was being shot off.

It was a wild ride, not as wholesome as one bareback on a mustang on the plains but with the same level of unpredictability and danger at the heart of it.

For those of you who haven't seen it but might want to, I'll try not to reveal too much here. It begins in a settlement with a woman who is dumb; we don't know why at this stage - born that way or other reason? She is a midwife, helped by her very young daughter who is her mouthpiece. She lives a relatively wholesome life with her husband and his son, who may not have accepted her as his mother but it's a manageable tension. But this all changes when the new preacher arrives.

And when I mean it all changes, I mean everything ramps up and it all gets rather nasty rather quickly.

Perhaps the title should have given me a clue but I have to say that I entered into this movie night a little naively, I think, and was punished for this lack of awareness quite resolutely.

Blood. Gore. Violence. Abuse. Lack of humanity. Profiteering. Prostitution. Distortion of Christianity for personal justification of behavioural motive. Beatings. Flagellation. Sex. Control. Duels. Hangings. This isn't an exhaustive list. I may have missed another proof of man's depravity to his fellow man. Oh yes! Scold's Bridle.

I know what you're going to ask: why didn't I stop watching it? And it's a good question.

The only explanation I can provide is that I was enticed by the way that it all unfolded. I like Guy Pearce who played the preacher. He's a good actor in my opinion although this role for him meant that he didn't do a lot of smiling, had very black eyes like a demon and I was willing his destruction by the end of it. But as a predator and a threat, he was masterful.

And I liked the way that it was structured and the way that the plot was revealed. This was not a film that was thrown together; it felt like it had been artistically composed with thought and consideration. The structure of the film is such that we work backwards and find what leads up to the point at where the film begins, with the ending providing a resolution.

Concerning itself as it did with the pursuit of an individual, it's probably best to name her. She is Liz, played by Dakota Fanning.

Each section or Act deals with different aspects of Liz's life and most are rather ominously named after books from the Bible and aptly so, an example being Genesis as the origin of the story. However, the last Act is not named after a Bible book which I think is deliberate, dominated as the story is for most of the action by the preacher up until this point.

And the film is full of twists and turns throughout and I was kept guessing as to what was going to happen next. It was well plotted and paced and I never felt bored, just repulsed for the most part and revolted and angry. Even Kit Harington's appearance as a needy outlaw failed to lift the mood.

The film, it is fair to say, is grim.

With that said, it has made me thoughtful and in need of finding the time to write something about why dramas seem to show the worst of humanity in all its gruesome gratuitous anti-glory (I've coined that - how Shakespearean) because I don't know if I want to see this in a drama. I don't mind some violence if it's fitting to the story but do I need to see it realistically as it may have looked? I don't think so. I don't need to see the dead foetus of a sheep after it's been slaughtered and gutted to know that someone has come in and killed the sheep and we already knew that they were for lambing. My imagination probably could have filled the gaps in quite nicely there just from the suggestion without having it thrust in my face.

Ah me.

Anyway, it's difficult to recommend something which felt like a Trauma Camp endurance test but if this is how you like your thrillers - parading their violent reprehensible content at you on every level and making you thoroughly disgusted and despondent as a result - then get the popcorn ready and some soft drinks and watch Brimstone and all its hellish human manifestations.

Enjoy!

Rachel Rating: a bloodsoaked and trembling 4 out of 5 stars