Firebrand
Cinestudio
Hartford
July 17, 2024
Firebrand, a movie directed by Karim Aïnouz and starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law, starts with a disclaimer: “History tells us a few things, largely about men and war. For the rest of humanity, we must draw our own — often wild — conclusions.”
I didn’t think much of those words, because historical dramas always embellish the truth, sometimes for entertainment value and sometimes because writers and directors simply don’t know all the facts.
Firebrand seemed to be sticking mostly to the facts throughout its two-hour runtime. The movie tells the story of Queen Katherine Parr, the last wife of the infamous King Henry VIII, who broke Great Britain away from the Catholic Church just to annul one marriage, and beheaded two of his later wives to escape those marriages. Katherine is a reformer who secretly supports radical efforts to change the Church of England. Her actions put her on a collision course with her husband, the incarnation of God on Earth.
Such a cruel and mercurial man provides Law with plenty of material to draw on. In every moment of his performance, he portrays King Henry to be a man always on the brink of madness. He is driven to paranoia and suspicion both by the demands of his role as king, and by a festering wound on his leg that leaves him in constant agony. Law is almost unrecognizable as the bloated king, and is clearly enjoying his turn as a man who gives into his basest desires, whether for sex, drink or violence.
It would be easy to allow Law’s performance to be the standout because of the brash nature of it. But Vikander brings a completely different manic energy to Queen Katherine that stands toe to toe with Law. Katherine is a smart, shrewd leader who enjoys the taste of power she receives when the king goes off to war and leaves her as regent. When the king returns early from his campaign because of his leg, the rumors have begun to swirl that radicals are plotting against him, and that Katherine may be one of them.
Vikander plays Katherine as a woman who is caught in a steadily tightening vice, as her friends are killed and her accomplices are interrogated by Bishop Gardiner, played with frightening zealotry by Simon Russell Beale. She is embarrassed by the king’s public indiscretions, threatened as a heretic by the bishop, and forced to see the man she truly loves, Thomas Seymour, in private (played as a gallant hero by Sam Riley- until he suddenly isn’t).
Vikander shows the toll that these stresses are taking on Katherine with a strong performance, revealing both Katherine’s steely resolve to stand up for the reform she believes in and the ways she chafes under the oppressive structures of the monarchy and their constraints on her, even as the queen.
So it’s disappointing when the film fulfills its promise of “wild conclusions” in the last ten minutes. The entire movie is building towards a tragic conclusion for Katherine, which will illuminate the absurdity of hereditary monarchy and the sickening cruelty of sycophants who let power be abused without challenge. Then it veers left, hard. Katherine strangles Henry VIII to death in their bedroom. A voiceover from one of the king’s children essentially says that she lived happily ever after.
I don’t know much about British history in the 14th century, but I feel like even I would know if a queen had crushed the windpipe of a king. As it turns out, that never happened. That massive change to history undoes everything else in the film, reducing it to the feverish imaginative work of a very talented creative team. In most cases this would be fine, even for a real historical figure. But so much of Firebrand is built on the reactiveness and heavy-handedness of the British crown and its church, so it casts a shadow on the rest of the film where I found myself asking if any of it had actually happened.
The greatness of the performances by Law and Vikander cannot be damaged by the last minute shift in the movie, but the impact of it absolutely suffers. I wish that Firebrand had stuck closer to reality, because I’m sure that the truth of Henry VIII’s rule was just as horrifying as what the writers imagined.
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Firebrand is available to purchase on YouTube and other streaming services.
Cinestudio is showing Treasure through June 25.
Jamil heads to downtown Hartford for some live music.
