Firebrand
Mark White
Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand is a frustratingly peculiar film as dramas go; with a composition of luscious lighting and camera work paired with club-footed dialogue and an anemic script, Firebrand feels like some well-intended but rote royal sonnet that no one knows quite how to read.
Taking the audience to the very end of the reign of Henry VIII (Jude Law), where religious reformation and geopolitical grandstanding and war underline the vanity and selfish nature often noted of his rule, the film sees Henry’s sixth and final wife Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander) acting as regent in his absence as he is abroad fighting the French, making decisions and holding court with cool feminine stoicism. Outside the the throne room, Catherine is a warm ‘mother’ to the three legitimate children of succession to Henry’s rule – Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward – as all three children have lost their mothers…divorced, beheaded, died. Having no children of her own (let alone the desired ‘spare’ son for Henry), Catherine has seemingly carved out a space amongst Henry’s court as not only his trusted wife and confident as consort, but as a worldly, maternal figure that Henry’s children admire, and that the rest of the court respect.
When it is revealed that Catherine is also conducting secretive meetings with Anne Askew, a Reformation-preaching rebel and childhood friend, the stage is set for intrigue, betrayal, and struggles for power as Catherine tries to hold a balance of influencing Henry with her ideological views, enlightening her ‘children’ in the palace…and not losing her husband – or her head – as she flies in the face of the King’s ironclad grip on the religious soul and identity of England, and his gargantuan self-image as the man chosen by God – under his own new rules – to rule.
The script is the singular failure of the film itself. A trio of writers hired to tackle the adaptive process of Elizabeth Fremantle’s Queen’s Gambit either did not know any more of British royal history outside of the source novel, or did not care to look further than Fremantle’s novel for story points to cobble together the script. Much of what the audience is presented here only resonates for someone coming in with a fairly strong recall of what Henry and his wives – and their resulting children – did to the face of British history. Without crafting scenes to allow Catherine – as our gateway to this Tudor thriller – to sit with the gravity of her five predecessors and their miserable fates, nor for the full-scale turmoil that England and Ireland face as a result of Henry’s warmongering and the creation of the Church of England and its impact on Catholicism and global religion, the resulting film is one that makes one-line references that should mean something, but sound hollow. The audience is never effectively informed, just simply allowed to peek at the broad strokes of what was an extraordinarily complex series of events that literally changed the world. None of what is briefly discussed is ever given time to create resonance.
A film that is divorced of history and beheaded of meaning but manages to just about survive, but without much fanfare…
And with Law and Vikander playing the aforementioned royal couple, you come to desperately want that resonance; both actors deliver multi-faceted and ranged performances that showcase the well-documented eroticism, gluttony, and boisterous nature of Henry, and the tempered, witty, and urbane setting on Catherine. Without much help from the script, the volatile energy shared between both actors is like watching a forbidden document being set ablaze – glances, facial movements, even moments of violence – all allow Law and Vikander to showcase paranoia, hubris, vanity, pride, and even love within both king and queen, for one another and for themselves, all of which does much more to clue the audience into the significance of the Tudor family dynamics than the ‘bullet point list’ of a script. It is a shame that the dialogue – which Law and Vikander speak best they can – offers little to cling to, especially since both Henry and Catherine were published and accomplished writers themselves who could really turn a phrase. If not for Law and Vikander, who at times risk overdoing it based on the dialogue and the lack of a cohesive and comprehensive narrative, the film would be void of any weight at all.
The film is sumptuously costumed and has cinematography and set design and lighting to make the thing look as if it was some sort of Tudor tapestry or painting made real; close ups of Vikander and Law showcase exceptional character makeup to help them become their respective royal avatars, resplendent in fur and feathers and leather fit for… well, kings and queens. A palace garden party in particular has medieval dancing complete with flourishes of flowers, splashes of flowing wine, and picturesque English countryside and stonework.
The film certainly has royal pedigree in its design work, make no mistake. But the fundamental lack of a comprehensive story cannot be overcome in the end. Scenes – actual scenes – that would frame Henry’s rule as the selfish reaction to power and legacy that literally changed a religion, and how that change would haunt his three children – each to rule with tragedies set around the Reformation – should be key to making Catherine’s tutelage of Elizabeth impactful on the screen, or to make Mary’s one line reference to her mother and returning England to the ‘better days’ to foreshadow her own reign of bloody persecution. But the scope and length of the script make this would-be interpersonal thriller of the Reformation era seem convoluted and haughty, as if modernized overtures to ‘girl power’ in a corset and bonnet are enough to sell the story. Catherine’s ideological and personal choices, the complex vanity presented in Henry, and how a whole ideological change in the divine right to rule – and whether to question that divinity – have an impact on everything from Christianity to the creation of the United States centuries later. And Catherine Parr, who survived Henry, was the very firebrand quietly working at the start of it all. But if you did not know that before, then this Firebrand certainly will not give any substantial enlightenment.
Final Thought
You will need to know more than the rhyme of Henry’s six wives to understand or appreciate the streamlined royal machinations here; sadly the film does not seem to know more than that rhyme either.