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A young woman called Liz (Dakota Fanning) lives among Dutch immigrants in ‘the new world’. She forms a family with a husband and two children. When the father teaches his son to shoot she is visibly upset and tries to stop them. We quickly learn she’s unable to speak and she’s not the natural mother of the boy. The film truely gets going when one day a new reverend (Guy Pearce) arrives in the small town -with a giant scar on his face across his left eye- and Liz starts to be haunted by past demons or a demon from the past to be more exact. Things really start to take a bad turn when Liz -while performing her duties as a midwife- needs to make a decision to safe the life of either the mother or the child.

The film tells the story of Liz in an achronological order (somewhat befitting of a film starring the lead actor of Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) although it doesn’t completely mimic that films structure) divided into four chapters; Revelation, Exodus, Genesis and Retribution slowly but surely revealing how all the elements fit together.

Although the film contains all the familiar elements we’ve become to expect (a duel in the streets, outlaws fighting over gold, scenes set in a horse stable, a whorehouse, …) Brimstone is not your usual western. It combines elements of both the classic american as well as the european western and that of horror films, with at times ‘gutsy’ results.

Martin Koolhoven has definitely studied the genre at length and you can tell he’s less interested in the more straightforward, simplistic, good versus evil (and of course good prevailing in the end), dressed in black versus dressed in white type of western when he finally was able to present his take on it. His heart tends to lean more towards individuals like the 3 Sergio’s (Leone, Sollima and Corbucci) or Hollywood outlaws such as Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, …) and Robert Altman (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, … ) and the man that has almost become the personification (both as an actor and as a director) of the western: Clint Eastwood (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Unforgiven, … ).

Throughout the film you can detect hints towards other westerns; the character that can not speak from a.o. Corbucci’s The Great Silence, a body being fed to pigs as in the HBO series Deadwood, …  we could go on for quite some time. The film that he’s quoted most directly however is Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955), probably the most cinematic movie ever made by an actor. When you see the character Liz sitting on her porch with a shotgun in an attempt to guard over her family inside (“Never leave your loved ones alone. You should know that by now.”) and in the distance you hear a voice singing menacingly (without even trying hard at it) it’s impossible not to think of Lilian Gish and Robert Mitchum in the aforementioned masterpiece.

As far as horror films are concerned at times Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) came to mind. There’s the importance of a birthmark (has a completely different role in Brimstone though) and the scene in which a nanny hangs herself in quite a spectacular fashion during a chidren’s birthday party that may have influenced Koolhaven for one of the films most horrific and significant moments.

Also Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) may well have (consciously or unconsciously) been on Koolhoven’s mind when he came up with the concept of Brimstone. Besides some pigs blood and a house being burnt to the ground it was actually the image of a fanatically religious parent draging her child through the house and into a broom closet -dragging through the mud in Brimstone- that immediately made a connection in my mind with the De Palma film.

Also the scene in which a character is being offed while in an outhouse for a number two, seemed to combine a scene from Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) with De Palma’s Blow Out (1981). I’m referring to the scene in the De Palma film in which a prostitute is brushing her teeth in a train station toilet but is murdered in quite a brutal fashion by the man that supposedly was to be her next customer.

Koolhoven has expressed his admiration for De Palma in the past and even had a scene in his previous film Oorlogswinter (Winter in Wartime, 2008) that was clearly influenced by De Palma’s Blow Out. The director was kind enough to take the time to acknowledge the influence when I recently pointed it out in a Tweet, even though he didn’t see it as an ‘homage’: https://twitter.com/MartinKoolhoven/status/823147953917427712

You can check the comparison clip here:

Another potential Blow Out reference in Brimstone:

Some inferno and brimstones in De Palma’s Carrie:

Another film that may have influenced Koolhoven -even though Brimstone was conceived well before- is Bertrand Bonello’s L’Apollonide (2012) a film set in a early 20th century brothel that similarly depicts the hardships women had to endure in the past.

Kolhoven was able to gather an impressive and interesting cast. With her role of Liz, Dakota Fanning should easily be able to get rid of her perception of a child star once and forever. Women are hardly ever the main character in westerns, I can think of only a few that have the name of a women in the title –Calamity Jane (1953), The Sons of Katie Elder (1967), Hannie Caulder (1971) and Jane Got a Gun (2016)– or in which women play an important part –Westward the women (1951), Johnny Guitar (1954) and Meek’s Cutoff (2010).

Guy Pearce who starred in the Australian western The Proposition seems ever so eager to revisit the genre with his depiction of the Reverend that looks like a devilish, self flagellating evil twin of Abraham Lincoln who keeps re-interpreting the Bible to condone his unforgivable and gravest of sins. “Beware of false prophets, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing”.

The film is known as Brimstone but the title clearly mentions Koolhoven’s Brimstone. Perhaps the director is hereby somewhat playfully hinting at Tarantino’s proudly announcing his film as the 8th or 9th film by Quentin Tarantino. It may be that for the first time he felt like he made a film of which he truly is the author and therefore in keeping with the title of the famous Frank Capra autobiography ‘The Name above the Title’ (which by the way has a foreword by another legend of the western: John Ford) he earned to put his name above the title.

As previously stated Koolhoven, as is Tarantino, is a cinephile in general and a western aficionado in particular and both can’t help but referring to other films. The main difference is that Koolhoven in this film is not going for the fun factor.

In December of 2016 I came across a number of interesting tweets in which people were making connections between art (mainly paintings) and films via the hashtag #artinfluencesfilm which was linked to the Twitter handle @ArtIntoFilm. I quickly joined the movement of tweeps combining their passion of art and film which was apparently created by someone who likes himself to be addressed to as Narsiesse.

On his twitter profile I noticed he was working on a short film called The Winemaker that had the ambition by way of a 4-part mini web series to eventually grow into a feature length film. The short has recently been released on Vimeo: vimeo.com/199781869 

This is clearly a very personal project made in collaboration with his family members and dedicated to the memory of his father in-law Joseph Van Den Hurk who obviously had been a spiritual inspiration. The filmmaker has expressed that via his The Winemaker film (series) he wishes to combine his passion for First Nation mythos, Japanese culture, William Shakespeare and Art influences film references.

Narsiesse has a Canadian First Nations background which is being referred to from the get-go via the ‘moving image’ of a running buffalo accompanying the title The Winemaker as well as with a relic/necklace I’m assuming is containing a buffalo tooth and via further artifacts later on.

It’s hard not to notice a couple of Stanley Kubrick references. One of the first images is that of a hand holding a bone with the sun in the background immediately bringing 2001: A Space Odyssey to mind.

Later on there are 2 kids that appear at the end of a hallway who end end up holding hands. Even though they are a boy and a girl and not girl twins it’s impossible no to connect this shot with Kubrick’s twin sisters from The Shining. Is the character of The Winemaker what the character of the Caretaker(s) is/were for The Shining?
At some stage a female character is heard via a voice-over stating: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open locks, whoever knocks!” Yes we have arrived in Macbeth and hence William Shakespeare country. The boy is played by Narsiesse’s real life son called Laertes, yes the man has a passion for Shakespeare. Narsiesse himself plays Vic, perhaps a reference to The Old Vic in London famous for staging a lot of Shakespeare’s plays?

Some of the symbols and references to Japanese culture that were clearly in there I was less familiar with, perhaps they will be further explained in the future miniseries and or feature version.

Although the film was shot on an I-Phone the result looks great and contains some impressively executed transitions. A shot of the moon reflected in a puddle of water transitions from the circular moon into the circle of the iris of an eye and further into a drop of water dripping from a winemaking machine. It made me think somewhat of the famous series of transitions in Citizen Kane in which every transition focussing on the lit window and in which each transition moves the viewer closer to the bedroom window of the Xanadu palace in which Charles Foster Kane is to utter his puzzling last words: Rosebud. Perhaps the main reason it reminded me of the  Citizen Kane opening series of transitions is that it also contains one of a reflection in the water.

I haven’t really discussed the narrative of the short yet, but that’s what reviews tend to overdo anyway. I therefore suggest you read the brief synopsis which is mentioned on Vimeo which appears to go beyond the narrative of the short.
If you are expecting a straightforward short film you may be dissapointed as the short seems to be conceived more as a teaser for things to come then it is a stand alone short film. I see Narsiesse’s project as if it were a ‘Matroesjka in reverse’. A Matroesjka is perhaps more commonly known as a Russian Doll. You have a big doll containing a smaller doll which in turn contains an even smaller doll and so on. Here instead we start off with the smallest doll, the short film that needs to excite the audience to want to see the next doll(s), the 4-part mini web series and culminating in the biggest doll, the feature, each adding new layers and meaning. It’s working for me so far.

You won’t be able to ignore it anyway, but please take a special notice of the lovely artwork Eugene Cobb (@cinemaofdreams) has designed especially for this film which is being showcased at the beginning and the end of the short film.

Jan Bollen