”Uneasy is the head that wears the crown”. And if you happen to be married to Henry VIII of England, uneasy is your head too given what has happened to your predecessors. Such is the case for Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), Henry’s last wife, in Karim Aïnouz’s first English-language film Firebrand.
It opens with a statement that we know history via men and war, and anything else is “often wild” conjecture. There is much here that would make historians raise a learned eyebrow and the wild speculation on display somehow diminishes Catherine’s importance while trying to raise it.
