Brimstone, 2016
Liz (Dakota Fanning) is a mute woman living with her husband (William Houston), his son (Jack Hollington) and her daughter (Ivy George). Liz is a midwife, and things take a turn for the very bad when a new preacher (Guy Pearce) rolls into town: a delivery goes bad and the bereaved father turns violent. As Liz flees the preacher, we get a series of chapters showing how he featured in her past and just how she came to her current situation.
Overall this was a well-acted film that looked great and had some interesting themes, but I struggled with how well I felt the plot fit into the runtime.
To be clear: a long runtime isn't inherently a problem for me. But in this case, it felt very much as if scenes were being given way more than the time they needed to breathe. Around the halfway point I stopped feeling like I was watching a slow burn and the word "plodding" started rearing its head. The reveals that we get as the film goes on are more and more outlandish, and yet I felt less and less moved. There's so much cruelty loaded into the first half of the movie that by the time I got to the end I had spent all of my caring coins.
I did think that the performances were really good. Even though it seemed like there was something a little funky going on with his accent, Pearce makes for a more than menacing antagonist. Perfectly balancing his performance is Fanning. Her Liz is clearly a strong person (heck, you'd have to be delivering babies on the frontier!), and her barely concealed panic every time she sees the preacher does plenty of heavy lifting in making him an imposing figure.
I also thought that the supporting actors were very good, including Emilia Jones as a young woman who features in Liz's past. Carice van Houten is haunting as Liz's mother in one of the flashback chapters. And though his role is very brief, Kit Harington makes an impression as a rare example of a sort of moral person in this bleak environment. I'd also give a nod to George, who more than holds her own against much older and more experienced actors.
The film also looks really good. It's a beautiful portrayal of a bleak and harsh landscape, ranging from arid deserts to snowy woods. There were also some really neat camera shots, such as a lovely and almost seamless transition holding on one character from one room to another.
I do think, though, that the movie lost me quite a bit in the last 15-20 minutes. The film is already an extended chronicle of cruel, brutal, and unfair things happening to people, especially women. (While several man are also killed, they are done so more incidentally, while many female characters are tortured, harassed, beaten, etc). It's such a negative outlook that it actually begins to rob the film of suspense. Oh, will that nice person be killed? Of course they will! It almost feels like it's bordering on parody as, in the last act
WARNING: spoilers below
Liz's possibly undead father is monologuing about getting to rape her 7 or 8 year old daughter
Liz's possibly undead father is monologuing about getting to rape her 7 or 8 year old daughter
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The film does offer a brutal portrayal of patriarchy, and more broadly how abuse and mistreatment are able to thrive especially in certain closed environments, whether that's a church or a brothel. (The fact that women are abused just as badly in the church as in the brothel is sort of bleakly funny.) I did appreciate the film's acknowledgement that women who stand up to abuse often do not fare well. The women in this movie who fight back against abuse are usually just abused further and worse, because the power structure that enables the abuse in the first place also enforces punishments against any pushback. I think that it also neatly skewers the whole "barely legal" fetishist crowd.
I was drawn into this one with the strong opening act, but I felt that it ran on too long and started to become a case of diminishing returns. The more it revealed, the less powerful it got.
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