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The biggest surprise of Firebrand is that it’s taken this long for Katherine Parr, sixth and final wife to Henry VIII, to receive her own revisionist portrait. She comes with her own tagline, after all: “survived”. It’s catchy. But the “girlboss at any cost” manifesto starts to look a little less rosy when you present the idea that Parr, through her Protestant sympathies and love of Henry’s children, paved the way for Elizabeth I’s rule as a fist-pump feminist victory. Firebrand tosses around the words “hope” and “tolerant” in reference to “Good Queen Bess”. I’m not sure the many, many thousands of Irish people who perished under her colonial thumb would agree.
And when Parr is played with such muted, steely grace by Alicia Vikander, who approaches the role less as queen, but as a politician at the chess table, it’s a wonder why screenwriters Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth even felt the need to pursue such historical manipulation in the first place. Firebrand, in its climax, veers wildly off the historical record. Yet, Parr’s accomplishments speak for themselves. Not only did she navigate court with the deftness needed to keep her head firmly on her shoulders, even when the arch-conservative Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale) had an eye on her downfall, but she was the first English queen to publish an original book under her name.
The Ashworth sisters’ script intensifies Parr’s daring by having her forge a (potentially sapphic) alliance with radical Protestant preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty). Furthermore, she uses her brief time as regent, while Henry is away on a military campaign, to push for the reinstatement of the more democratic and accessible English bible. It’s a promising dramatic start, to pursue an ideological clash between Parr’s determination to enact change from within (“He’s changed! He listens to me,” she insists, about a man who executed two of his previous wives) and Askew’s rebellious, “burn it all down” nature.
Yet, there’s the large, lumbering inconvenience known as Henry VIII to consider, and he’s played so monstrously well by Jude Law that he threatens to devour the entire picture. As soon he’s back in the picture, Firebrand can’t help but shift its focus to the tyrant’s last days, as his old, ulcerated jousting wound, a fountain of blood and pus, eats away at both body and mind. And even as Law, buried beneath his wiry beard and sagging bodice, grunts, thrusts, and probes with puffy fingers, he still carries the faintest glimmer of movie star charm. It’s the reminder that Henry was once one of Europe’s most eligible bachelors. His is a story of true physical and moral decay.
And it’s here that Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s impassioned and atmospheric direction really takes hold. There’s enough fog-laced countryside, strained with Dickon Hinchliffe’s portentous score, that you half expect Macbeth’s army to crest the hilltop. Firebrand exceeds in capturing the way mundanity can slip so easily into terror; how a feast or a jest, caught beautifully by Hélène Louvart’s naturalistic cinematography and populated by Michael O’Connor’s richly detailed costumes, can descend into hell at the turn of one man’s emotions. The film’s best scene sees a sudden moment of conviction from Parr, cruelly punished in return. But that’s a life and a world too rich to fit onto a slogan T-shirt.
Dir: Karim Aïnouz. Starring: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Sam Riley, Simon Russell Beale. 15, 120 mins.
‘Firebrand’ is in cinemas from 6 September
