Brimstone (2016 film)

Brimstone is a 2016 western thriller film written and directed by Martin Koolhoven, starring Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Kit Harington, and Carice van Houten. It is an international production, although mostly Dutch.

It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2016. It premiered in the Netherlands on January 12, 2017, before being released on March 10 in the United States in selected theaters and video on demand. It received mixed reviews in the US, in contrast to positive reviews in Europe and at festivals.

Plot
Revelation

Liz lives with her husband Eli and two children, one of which is a boy from her husband's prior marriage, and the other is a young girl. The family lives in the old west. Liz is a midwife, but is mute and communicates through sign language. A new minister comes to their church, and the moment that Liz hears his voice, she is terrified, as she is convinced that the man is dangerous. Eli notices bad things happening, but blames Nathan, an irrational drunk whose newborn baby died during labor and who blames the death on Liz who delivered the child. Liz decides to murder the minister, and sneaks off at night to do so, but finds her daughter's doll in the bed of the minister instead of him and realizes that her family is in danger. As she rushes back to her family, the minister disembowels Eli, who is then left to die. Her husband's final request is for his son to take the family up into the mountains, where Eli's father lives. With a horse and carriage, Liz and her two children manage to flee from the farm, now on fire.

Exodus

A young girl named Joanna walks exhausted through the desert and is picked up by a Chinese family. In the mining town of Bismuth, she's sold to a bar/brothel owned by Frank. A prostitute named Sally tries to care for and protect her, but is hanged for shooting a violent customer. This leads to Joanna eventually becoming a prostitute. A few years later Joanna reveals that 'Joanna' was Liz's former identity. Joanna's friend is another prostitute, Elizabeth. One day, Elizabeth bites the tongue of an abusive customer, which results in Frank cutting off her tongue as punishment. Now living as a mute, Elizabeth learns sign language from Joanna, who teaches her from a book the doctor gave her. Elizabeth plans to sneak out of Bismuth to find a new life, and makes arrangements through a marriage broker to marry Eli. As Joanna is helping Elizabeth prepare to leave, the minister shows up in the brothel. He pays to take Joanna to a room and becomes violent. Elizabeth runs in with a knife to save Joanna, saving her from being whipped, but the minister ultimately ends up killing Elizabeth. Joanna proceeds to grab the knife and slashes the throat of the minister, and then takes Liz's clothes and identity. She cuts out her own tongue in order to be able to match Liz’s backstory and takes her place in an arranged marriage to Eli, who has never seen Elizabeth.

Genesis

In the desert, two badly wounded men, Samuel and Wolf, are the last men standing in a larger dispute over mined gold that has left several other men dead. They depart on a single horse. Young Joanna lives with her mother, Anna, and father, who is revealed to be the minister. Anna is reticent to have sex with her husband, which causes him to turn his interest to his daughter. Samuel and Wolf arrive at the farm and, without telling her parents, Joanna hides the outlaws and begins to take care of them. When Anna confronts the minister with his intentions toward their daughter, he beats and humiliates her by placing a scold's bridle on her head, so that she commits suicide in full view of the church congregation. The next day the increasingly unhinged minister takes Joanna to church and starts to perform a wedding ceremony between himself and his daughter. Samuel comes in to rescue her, but the minister kills him. Angry that she has hidden this man from him, the minister drags her towards their house through the mud. She screams that she loves Samuel and enrages her father when she admits that she lusted after him. After the minister whips Joanna, he rapes her. In the morning she runs off, away from her sleeping father.

Retribution

Liz, with her children, Sam and Matthew, she plows through the snow to go to the home of Eli's father, up in the mountains. When they cross a frozen lake, Matthew is shot by the minister and dies. Liz and Sam reach their destination. As Liz guards the house, the minister shows up again and tells Liz that he will substitute Liz's daughter for Liz, as he believes himself damned forever anyway. Liz manages to kill him. Some time later, Liz has turned Eli's place into a sawmill, where she lives with her young daughter, but Nathan arrives to arrest her. He tells her that it was the minister who instructed him to go to Bismuth to start a new life. He became a deputy and when the old sheriff died, the town chose him as the new one. He then found the 'Wanted Poster' of Elizabeth Brundy, a woman without a tongue. It turns out the original Elizabeth killed Frank just before she turned up to save Liz/Joanna, and Nathan is coming to take her back and hang her. As Nathan is escorting her onto a ferry, with a last look at her daughter playing on the shore, Liz decides to throw herself in the lake and drown. Later, Sam is now a grown woman with a child of her own, and we find that she is the narrator of the story.

Cast

 * Dakota Fanning as Liz
 * Guy Pearce as The Reverend
 * Kit Harington as Samuel
 * Carice van Houten as Anna
 * Emilia Jones as Joanna
 * Jack Roth as Wolf
 * Jack Hollington as Matthew
 * Paul Anderson as Frank
 * Carla Juri as Elizabeth
 * Vera Vitali as Sally
 * William Houston as Eli
 * Bill Tangradi as Nathan
 * Naomi Battrick as older Sam
 * Ivy George as Sam
 * Justin Salinger as Doctor
 * Frederick Schmidt as Sheriff Zeke
 * Adrian Sparks as Eli's Father
 * Bill Tangradi as Nathan
 * Joseph Kennedy as the husband of pregnant woman
 * Martha Mackintosh as the pregnant woman
 * Hon Ping Tang as Meng
 * Fergus O'Donnell as Fred Eastman
 * Joe David Walters as customer Sally
 * Ad van Kempen as Arie
 * Frieda Pittoors as Agatha
 * Farren Morgan as Mike
 * Charlotte Croft as Abigail
 * Baely Saunders as Jackie
 * Paula Siu as Meng's wife
 * Sue Maund as Abigail's mother
 * Hans-Joachim van Wanrooij as Blacksmith

Casting
On February 5, 2015, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska were the first to be announced as part of the cast of the film. Later, Robert Pattinson came on board to portray an outlaw along with Carice van Houten.

In May 2015, Koolhoven confirmed that Jack Roth has joined the cast of the film. In June 2015, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Dakota Fanning and Kit Harington had replaced Wasikowska and Pattinson in the film, respectively. In 2017 Pattinson said he regretted not doing Brimstone and called it "his own stupid fault".

Filming
Principal photography began from June 15, 2015 and took take place in Hungary, Spain, Austria and Germany.

Release
Brimstone's first commercial release was in The Netherlands on 12 January 2017, becoming Martin Koolhoven's fifth consecutive hit film. It was also released on March 10, 2017 in selected theaters and video on demand in the United States.

Brimstone was sold to more than 80 countries in the world, making it the best sold Dutch movie ever.

Festival screenings
Brimstone was shown in competition at the Venice Film Festival where it was met by a rousing applause, yet stirred great controversy amongst the press.

After Venice, the film had its North American premiere as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival where it was met with good press. After that it went to festivals around the world, like London, Jakarta, Shanghai, etc. On the Sitges Film Festival Brimstone had very good press and created a huge buzz, especially on social media

Critical reception
The film received positive reviews in The Netherlands from critics and opened strongly.

The readers of True West Magazine chose the movie as Best Foreign Western Movie.

Koolhoven won the Gouden Pen (Golden Pen) for the screenplay and the Gouden Film (Golden Film) for the film.

In contrast to the positive reception in Europe, American reviews for the film were mixed. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, though no Critics Consensus has yet been reached, the film has a rating of 39% based on 46 reviews and the average rating is 4.9/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 from mainstream critics, the film has a score of 44 based on 16 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

While The Independent wrote "Brimstone is raw and very powerful filmmaking, a movie that can't help but get under your skin," Variety wrote it was "highfalutin exploitation," blaming it on the Netherlands, writing "It is, after all, a country that ever since the 1960s, especially in Amsterdam, has profferred a more liberal view than almost any other place of what might euphemistically be termed 'youthful sexuality."

The Political Film Society has nominated Brimstone as best film on human rights of 2017.

The movie was released in the United Kingdom 29 September 2017 and, like in other European countries, was very well received Empire Magazine gave it four stars and called it "white-knuckle tense", The Hollywood News called it "one of the most visceral and intense western thrillers of all time" and Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian: "This epically long, lurid, violent western from Dutch film-maker Martin Koolhoven has a kind of Tarantino-ish prolixity and narrative ingenuity. Despite its very indulgent length, it never bores."

29 September 2017 Brimstone won six Golden Calves (often called "The Dutch Oscars") at the Netherlands Film Festival, breaking the old record of four.

Awards

 * Nominated – Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Film
 * Winner – Golden Pen, Martin Koolhoven
 * Nominated – Best Film in the Official Competition, London Film Festival
 * Nominated – PFS Award (Human Rights) by Political Film Society
 * Nominated – Audience Award (Best Narrative Feature), Palm Springs International Film Festival
 * Winner – Best Foreign Western Movie chosen by the readers of True West Magazine
 * Winner – Ensor Award, Beste Co-productie at the Ostend Film Festival
 * Nominated – International Ecumenical Award at the Miskolc International Film Festival
 * Nomimated – Golden Calf, Carice van Houten, Best Actrice in a supporting Role, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Nominated – Golden Calf, Job ter Burg, Best Editing, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Nominated – Golden Calf, Martin Koolhoven, Best Screenplay, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Floris Vos, Best Production Design, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Tom Holkenborg, Best Music, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Herman Pieëte, Best Sound Design, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Rogier Stoffers, Best Director of Photography, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Martin Koolhoven, Best Direction, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Winner – Golden Calf, Els Vandevorst, Best Film, Netherlands Film Festival
 * Nominated – Best Feature Length Film, Official Fantastic Competition, Sitges Film Festival
 * Nominated – Golden Frog, Rogier Stoffers, The International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage
 * Winner – European Film Award, Leendert van Nimwegen, European Hair & Makeup Artist, European Film Academy
 * Winner – Beste Dutch Film 2017, Circle of Dutch Film Journalists (KNF)
 * Nominated – Zilveren Krulstaart, Martin Koolhoven, Best Feature, Screenplay Award
 * Winner – DirectorsNL Award, Martin Koolhoven, Best Feature, Director's Award given by DDG and Vevam Members
 * Pending – Saturn Award for Best International Film