Katherine Parr's Protestant sympathies set her on a collision course with
her husband, King Henry VIII.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Karim Aïnouz
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Simon Russell Beale, Sam Riley, Erin Doherty
Katherine Parr was the only wife of the infamous King Henry VIII to survive
the marriage, the previous five having either been cast out or had their
heads removed from their shoulders. You might say Katherine was the final
girl of this particularly brutal horror franchise. That's kind of how
Firebrand, Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz's English-language debut,
positions Katherine. The film is based around her scheming ways as she tries
to change her husband's mind regarding how he rules his kingdom, with a
specific focus on his attitude towards Protestant reformers, to whom
Katherine has a sympathetic attitude.
"History tells us a few things, mostly about men and war," reads the text
that opens this adaptation of Elizabeth Fremantle's 2013 novel
'Queen's Gambit' (the screenplay is by twin sisters Henrietta and
Jessica Ashworth). Of course, history tells us a lot about many women
who have used war to curry favour with their subjects, from Cleopatra to
Thatcher, but Firebrand seeks to reductively portray women as
angelic and peaceful, as opposed to the inherent evil of men. It even
laughably closes out with a piece of text that claims Queen Elizabeth I's
reign was "defined by neither men nor war," at which point every Spanish
viewer will presumably do a spit take. At what point does historical
revisionism become gaslighting?
The opening text is Firebrand's way of announcing that it believes it has the license to make up its own
story about Katherine, which is odd, as it's not like she's some unknown
figure. Plenty is documented about Katherine, and the film's core audience
of British history buffs will likely spend much of Firebrand's running time rolling their eyes.
Given how Firebrand has decided it can do whatever it wants
with the story of Katherine, you would imagine it might come up with
something more engaging than the lifeless drama that unfolds in sub-BBC
fashion over two hours. The movie opens with Jude Law's Henry away in
France while Catherine (Alicia Vikander) is left to rule England as
regent. The Henry-less England is portrayed as a utopia akin to the opening
scenes of the shire in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, with women enjoying each other's company and children playing gaily in
the sunshine. Catherine even gets to hang out with heretics, attending
sermons by Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), a radical Protestant reformer
who calls for revolution, convincingly arguing that the Catholic church
refuses to translate the bible from Latin as a means of withholding its
revolutionary zeal. Anne is the film's real firebrand, and you can't help
but wish the film was focussed on her story rather than that of
Katherine.
When Henry returns from France, a metaphorical cloud is cast over the
kingdom. Hearing of Anne's preaching, he orders his lackeys to hunt her down
and have her burned at the stake. This drives a wedge between Katherine and
the king, with the former quietly scheming behind his back. And by "quietly"
I mean she doesn't really do anything. There's nary an ounce of
Shakespearean intrigue, nor Dallas/Dynasty intrigue for that matter, as Katherine's main plan
is simply to wait for Henry to die from gout. Waiting for a villain to die
is about as exciting as it sounds, and the only thing that keeps us remotely
engaged in Firebrand is Law's larger-than-life performance as
he portrays the notorious ruler as something of a cross between Russell
Crowe and Orson Welles.
Unfortunately we spend most of the narrative in the company of the one-note
Katherine, who is played in pulseless fashion by a miscast Vikander. Along
with struggling to disguise her Swedish accent, Vikander never gets to the
heart of the character, which is largely the fault of a script that doesn't
really know what to do with Katherine. Vikander's very modern looks make her
stand out from the roster of not so glamorous British character actors in
her orbit, which pushes the dated and offensive notion that good people are
physically attractive while the villainous are overweight and asymmetrical.
Katherine and Henry's interactions are fraught with the lazy use of a
fat-suited Law's imposing physicality rather than the power he wields as
ruler of England, France and Ireland; the domestic violence is no different
than if Katherine were married to a farmer. Along with its patronising
message that women are angelic creatures, Firebrand's insistence that Henry is a wrong 'un because he's a man rather than
because he's a king demonstrates how the film fundamentally refuses to heed
the historical evidence that power is capable of corrupting all those who
wield it, even poor wikkle wimmin.
Firebrand is in UK/ROI cinemas
from September 6th.
