Firebrand directed by Karim Aïnouz is an entertaining slice of simplified English history starring Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan and Simon Russell Beale.
Burning Issues
by Alexa DalbyFirebrand
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
These are the last dregs of the reign of Henry VIII. He’s on his sixth wife and he’s paranoid, bloated and his legs are rotting. His doctor thinks he won’t last long now. His realm is riven with religious schism, the fall-out from his divorce of Anne Boleyn.
Firebrand plays host to myriad British stars, unrecognisable behind their beards – Henry VIII (rumbustious Jude Law, with huge padding), Edward Seymour (Eddie Marsan) and slimy Bishop Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale). The fight for democratic religion (the just-published English version of the Bible and the Latin Mass in English) is preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), a real-life figure, who is accused of heresy when she advocates direct access to religion for ordinary people, bypassing priests. And who knows where this democracy might lead? Her secret friend is the Queen, twice-widowed but (too?) young-looking Catherine Parr (a restrained Alicia Vikander), who has Protestant leanings and radical religious sympathies, which must be hidden from the tyrannical and unpredictable king. However, he trusts her enough to make her Regent temporarily while he is away in battle but not enough to not accuse her of adultery with Thomas Seymour (Sam Riley) (In the film, this is a trumped-up accusation). Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is a doomed successor, the Seymour’s young nephew Edward (Patrick Buckley) next in line to the throne, of whom the Seymours have great expectations, and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter Princess Mary (Patsy Ferran).
Firebrand is set in a very interesting period of English history, when there was a (not taken) chance for a societal turning point and Catherine Parr is mainly an unknown quantity, so there’s a good opportunity for revisionism. It’s very competently directed by Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz in his English-language feature debut, giving a non-English viewpoint rather like Ang Lee on Jane Austen. Firebrand is a bit like a made-for-TV movie and it doesn’t benefit by comparison to Hilary Mantell’s atmospheric Wolf Hall trilogy and TV series. Firebrand has the beautiful surface appearance, the horrendously graphic sex, the costumes, the dysfunctional intrigue at court and the rustic crowd scenes, but it never quite gels.
The voiceover which bookends the film is, it turns out, by the future Queen Elizabeth (Junia Rees), then a teenager. Which begs the question, who is the eponymous firebrand? Is it her? Is it Anne Askew, burnt at the stake? Is it the coercively controlled, quietly obedient yet religiously persisent Catherine Parr? Surely not. All the ‘suspects’ are women, playing roles previously unthinkable in a patriarchal society. Could it be the burning new ideas that almost set England alight?
Despite its historical shortcomings, Firebrand is still entertaining and gripping in a Sunday-evening, Catherine Cookson-serial kind of way. It’s based on the novel Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle.
Firebrand premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is released on 6 September 2024 in the UK.
