‘Firebrand’: A So-So Study of Henry VIII’s Plucky Last Wife
A review of ‘Firebrand’, directed by Karim Aïnouz; MBK Productions and Brouhaha Entertainment, 2023.
Called, rather oddly, a ‘girlboss biopic’ by the Independent newspaper, Firebrand deals with the married life of Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), sixth wife of the famously lusty and brutal Henry VIII. At the beginning, Henry (Jude Law) is away enjoying that great English pasttime of warring with the French, and Catherine, as Regent, takes the opportunity to see an old friend: the radical Protestant reformer Anne Askew (Erin Doherty). You will recall that Henry VIII split from Rome and set up the Church of England so he could divorce his first wife, the Catholic Catherine of Aragon. But this split was by no means clean, and for practical reasons Henry and his court wished to stay on reasonably good terms with some of their Catholic counterparts on the continent. Moreover, there was rising popular interest in cutting priests out of the person’s relation with God by going straight to Scripture. In one of the opening scenes of Firebrand, Anne Askew makes the case for getting rid of the ecclesiastical middle-man during some rabble-rousing in a forest.
Then Henry comes home early. By this point, thanks to a jousting accident, he is fat, scarcely able to walk, and his legs are inflamed and oozing with pus. He is still good fun, however, partly because he is played by Jude Law, who rather unfortunately (given this is a feminist take on things) steals every scene. He is moody, menacing, caddish, paranoid and prone to bursting into song at courtly get-togethers. Although he and others, including Bishop Stephen Gardiner (played brilliantly by Simon Russell Beale) are deeply suspicious of Catherine, (who has recklessly given away one of Henry’s gifts to her to Anne), Henry is easily mollified by his young and clever wife, who knows just what to say and do to get him to calm down. One way is to let him heave his substantial bulk on top of her and try to impregnate her with a ‘spare’—that is, a second son. (Already, he has Edward, born to Jane Seymour; as well as Mary (born to Catherine of Aragon) and Elizabeth (born to Anne Boleyn)).
Henry is moody, menacing, caddish, paranoid and prone to bursting into song and courtly get-togethers.
But she buggers this up when she learns of someone’s murder, telling Henry a bit too loudly that this person’s death ‘is on your soul!’ Henry does his best impression of a softly spoken Mafia enforcer type, grabbing her by the neck and giving her a good rattle to remind her he is ‘God’s deputy’, that his soul is not to be mentioned and that he is certainly not to be trifled with. Things get better here, cinematically speaking: now, we have some tension to work with. There are still the courtly parties at which songs are sung and meat is flung about; but there is also scheming in stairwells, an increasingly suspicious (and vicious) Bishop, a mad and maddening King Henry, and sundry intrigues concerning the standing of the Seymours, brothers of the late Jane and uncles of Edward, the next king.
The theme, as I have alluded to, is set out explicitly in a voiceover from the young Elizabeth: history is largely about men and war, but—would you believe it?—women played a part, too. It is slightly inconvenient, given this, that the film is so thoroughly stolen by the warlike men at the heart of it; but Catherine’s profound intelligence, tact, mental strength, boldness and principle does come across, and that is to the credit of writers Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth, given how little freedom a women in Henry’s court could have had. What is odd, I think, is that Catherine Parr is in fact not just an interesting historical figure but a major figure in English-language literary history, because she was the first woman to publish a book in the English language in her own name. Her writing of a book is mentioned in the film; supposedly all the princesses in Europe are reading it. Its historical significance is, however, downplayed.
History is largely about men and war, but — would you believe it? — women played a part, too.
The outfits, as you can imagine, are utterly gorgeous, Catherine’s in particular; and Hélène Louvart’s cinematography is very chiaraoscuro, playing with light and shadow in a way that is, at times, reminiscent of Caravaggio. There are some beautiful shots of the English countryside and its castles, so beautiful in fact that at times they risk eliciting a small spasm of patriotic feeling. Alicia Vikander plays Catherine Parr as necessarily stoic and restrained, which as I have mentioned does not imbue the character with much charisma. But, again, it is to be expected: she is, after all, the sixth wife of King Henry VII, whose earlier attempts at marriage are neatly summed up in a rhyme: ‘divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded—’ You fill in the blank.
So there you have it: Firebrand in a handful of paragraphs. It is a flawed film, though not a terribly flawed one. It is much too slow, and rests too heavily both on our identification with Catherine and appreciation for the importance of those small differences in religious worship and approach that caused so much pointless bloodletting during the Reformation. On the other hand, there is some very good acting, including a standout performance from Simon Russell Beale. Law, as I have mentioned, is fantastically nasty and disgusting (particularly during a scene in which his leg oozes so freely that every person in the room has to hold his nose and some seem on the verge of being sick). The team who did the hair and makeup ought to be congratulated, and the actual filming of the thing is very good, too.
