Director: Karim Aïnouz
Writers: Henrietta Ashworth, Jessica Ashworth
Stars: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan
Synopsis: Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, is named regent while the tyrant battles abroad. When the king returns, increasingly ill and paranoid, Katherine finds herself fighting for her own survival.
It is almost funny, not to mention odd, how heavily a prestige television show about continental domination, dragons, and incest has influenced every medieval-adjacent drama since Game of Thrones premiered on HBO in 2011. Never before the reigns of House Targaryen, Stark, and the like had I heard the term “sanctity of the realm” tossed around so frivolously when describing a kingdom’s safety, yet now it’s as common as the “prestige drama” distinction. Those words don’t actually mean anything, but are said in hopes of hammering home the severity of a given situation involving knights on horseback and royal relations in disrepair. If not for the sanctity of the realm, then what? (Gee, I don’t know, world peace?)
So it’s no surprise that Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand begins with title cards that read, “History tells us many things, largely about men and war. For the rest of humanity, we must draw our own – often wild – conclusions.” For it is indeed a story about men and war, one that draws increasingly wild conclusions about what actually went down beyond the drawbridge. All the while, though, it attempts to posit itself as a tale of female empowerment, the story of Katherine Parr, King Henry VIII’s only surviving wife. (There were six. A handy little trick to help you remember has been branded into the pop culture zeitgeist since the Broadway musical “Six” was first staged: “Divorced, beheaded, died; Divorced, beheaded, survived.”)
When she and Henry (a wacky Jude Law) wed, Katherine (Alicia Vikander) represented a new dawn to their loyal subjects, a possible reprieve from the menacing ways of the King. Adapted by Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth from Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel, “Queen’s Gambit,” Firebrand sees Katherine “flirting” with radicals from its beginning moments, something her ardent supporters warily appreciate, but a behavior that Henry’s disciples deem threatening to the monarch’s rule. Though Katherine sees her choices, like publishing a book under her own name and communicating with friends and outsiders alike, as non-issues, given that Henry has never laid a hand on her. A friend tells Katherine that this is because he is confident in her weakness; the only reason he keeps her safe – rather than having her burnt or beheaded like the others who disobey him – is because he doesn’t fear her influence. Or, at the very least, he knows he can trump it with the swift wave of a hand.
This subtle conflict drives Firebrand, for better and for worse, as while it lends itself to a few standout moments when Henry’s rage takes over, leading him to literally instilling the fear of God into his followers and, most notably, his wife, it’s too narrowly conveyed to ever get off the ground. It’s a shortcoming that can’t possibly fall on the shoulders of Law, whose turn as Henry is equal parts sinister and silly, aided not so subtly by a fatsuit and a garish, revolting leg wound that spends Firebrand’s entire overlong runtime infested with maggots and oozing with pus.
Then again, films of this nature grow tired quickly, as they rely more heavily with every passing scene on the bemoaning diatribes of their Kings, many of which find themselves in paralyzing pain and, as a side effect, mental hysteria. Firebrand’s fate is similar. Law leaves no crumbs, but it’s admittedly difficult to sink your teeth into a game of cat and mouse when the cat in question roars like a lion and the mouse is intermittently sidelined from her own contest. Vikander, like Law, shant be faulted, for when given the space to do so, her Katherine inhabits a Jerry-esque energy to combat Law’s Tom, endlessly squirrelly and finding hole after hole to crawl into for safety. If only she was able to operate outside of the holes as much as she is behind the walls they lead to.
Otherwise, Vikander’s Katherine operates with the same sort of vivacity I imagine her A.I. vessel from Ex Machina would, had we continued to follow her post-Oscar Isaac trek into civilization. She’s not dull, but she appears to be finding her footing in a film that expects her to have it from the jump, even if she seems to have abruptly stood up only to find that both of her legs are asleep every time we see her communicating with others. There’s a ferocity to Katherine that Vikander evokes only in fits and starts, but that’s more a bug of the film, not the performer.
In fact, Firebrand seems to be hell-bent on keeping the pace of a manually-operated car, requiring the perfect balance of shifting and hitting the clutch if it’s ever going to move forward. At least early on, the narrative potholes it faces on an already irregularly-moving journey aren’t at all serviced by Hélène Louvart’s cinematography, which flattens and dulls the colors and sets, all of which could (and should) otherwise be vibrant and impressively crafted for accuracy per the time. In time, things settle and become more stimulating – to be expected from the woman behind the lens for The Lost Daughter, La Chimera, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and more – but little else about Aïnouz’s stylistic approach seems to have a point. Heike Parplies, the editor behind Toni Erdmann and Aïnouz’s previous feature, Invisible Life, elects to place meaningless cuts throughout Firebrand; one moment, we’re following Katherine as she walks in a panic from one point to another, until the film suddenly cuts to the same stroll, only four steps later. There’s little purpose here, an odd choice for a film that feels like it exists solely to prove its director has a knack for artistic flair, never mind if said flair lacks substance entirely.
The movie’s central conflict – Katherine gave a necklace away to her radical friend, Anne (Erin Doherty), and the King must find out how it came into her possession – feels dulled by an incessant idleness to the project, or at least the narrative that surrounds it. You never truly feel that it’s going anywhere, and it’s especially not going anywhere fast, resulting in a two-hour slog chock-full of great performers who have very little to do. (That Eddie Marsan’s name has yet to be mentioned isn’t an oversight, but simply due to the fact that he under-utilized in a sly role as one of the King’s advisors.) Perhaps there’s no better way to say it: Firebrand lacks fire. It’s a film so desperate to cram everyone and everything into its half-baked world that the result is about as close to nothing as a movie can be. You might say that the sanctity of the realm is looking rather dire.
