Fire Over “Brimstone”
As part of my ongoing commitment to keeping “A Survivor’s Ear” on selected offerings in print and film media, I occasionally run across books, films and documentaries I’ve never heard of but feel called upon to talk about after I encounter them. One such recent film is “Brimstone,” a 2019 film by director Dutch director Martin Koolhoven about one woman’s brutal experiences during the good old days of the American West.
Revisionist Westerns are not new. The first I remember was Cint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” which featured a female character who had been raped. It was an unsentimental film designed to overturn the mythology of the Wild West as a time of heroes.
I encountered “Brimstone” while browsing cable listings for something to watch other than the usual junk on the streaming channels. Sounded interesting, and featured Guy Pierce and Dakota Fanning, so it passed my requirement of having someone I’ve heard of in the cast. It stayed on my list for several weeks until I got around to taking a look.
Let me make one thing very clear. I am not, in any way shape or form, recommending this movie for survivors. It was about as brutal a depiction of unthinkably violent crimes against women as I’ve encountered. Rape was only the beginning. There was violence, suicide, father-daughter sexual molestation, and an introduction to something new, to me, the ”Scold Bridle,” a metal harness placed and locked on a woman’s head that rendered her speechless.
I clenched my jaws and made it through to the very unsatisfying ending, simply because, as a writer, I’m rarely able to leave a story without getting to the end no matter what. Afterwards, I started Googling like crazy to find out more about the film.
Critic and viewers, male and female alike, took director Martin Koolhoven apart.
“Indulgent male sadistic fantasy”
“So obviously seen through a male gaze”
“Not a feminist film at all” (Male directors should be more careful about saying that)
“Unwatchable.”
Well, I disagree.
Listen. I’m usually the first person to start screaming about gratuitous violence, especially sexual violence, as is it perpetrated against women in the media. I stopped watching Game of Thrones in year two, just because I was so sick of it. OK, I started again in year five, but that was just because I love dragons! I didn’t make it to the ending because I knew the dragons would die. Apparently, I can tolerate cruelty towards humans more than I can tolerate cruelty to animals. I’ll have to address that one another time.
I’ve walked out of movies with rape scenes more times than I can remember. So why did I keep watching “Brimstone?”
I didn’t find the violence to be completely gratuitous. The rape scenes, in my opinion, were not glamorized or romanticized as so many of them are. The nudity was there, but it was not the focus. I think the director was honestly, if perhaps clumsily, trying to send a message about the real lives of many women in the Old American West.
Did he go too far? Maybe. I think back to one of the conversations I had in the early days of running Awakenings, about how to talk to people about sexual abuse. I had said something to the Assistant Director about how you can’t just hit everyone in the face. Sometimes, I said, you have to be subtle in crafting your message. Her response? “I thought you were always a big fan of the punch in the jaw.”
She was right.
Look at what’s going on around us. Like the latest example to hit the media at Cornell University. Are people really still shocked that something like this happened? How far have we really come from the good old days of the American West when men were men, women were an afterthought at best, and Native Americans were being wiped off the face of the nation?
I write and speak about these issues every chance I get, and I usually try to pick my battles and choose my words. But maybe it’s time to go back to the old punch in the jaw. POW.
