The 1933 hit film The Private Life of Henry VIII was, inevitably, structured around the infamous king’s six wives. But wife number six, Katherine Parr, only got a minute or so of screen time at the very end, as the comedy schoolmarm who tamed the king in his old age. She deserved better.

Parr was probably the cleverest, certainly the most scholarly, maybe the most appealing of all six wives — and outliving her murderous husband was quite an achievement. In fact, six months before he died, Henry was (researchers think) briefly persuaded to get rid of her — a crisis she adroitly managed to talk her way out of. I’ve been thinking for years that story deserves to be told on screen.

Now it has been — sort of. Firebrand is based on a 2013 novel by Elizabeth Fremantle (the first of her “Tudor trilogy”) and directed in dank, menacing tones by Karim Aïnouz. It comes achingly close to being a terrific retelling of the story. There are some missed opportunities and some weird decisions, which is okay. But then, in the last 20 minutes, the whole thing self-destructs.

If you care about the actual history, it’s worth knowing that Firebrand is pretty loosely based on real events and includes some major stuff that definitely didn’t happen in real life. That’s fine, of course — it’s a movie. It’s no more inaccurate than a Shakespeare history play — or not much more.

Firebrand finally tells Katherine Parr’s story, but it is Jude Law’s grippingly grotesque portrayal of Henry VIII that steals the spotlight

I did find it a bit weird that, at the start, we’re told the royal court has fled to (improbably) Derbyshire to avoid the plague — and that they then stay there, in near-total isolation, for months on end. This means the whole film can be shot at one atmospheric location: but it also looks as if England has a total population of about 50, with no courts, parliament, ambassadors, army or frankly anything apart from a tiny group of nobles and servants. I’m sure this was done to make the film feel tight and claustrophobic — not to keep production costs down.

Still, enough griping. The beating heart of Firebrand is the portrayals of the king and queen themselves, and they are fantastic.

Jude Law is a grippingly grotesque dying monster — pathetic, capricious and cruel. His bouts of good humour or self-pity are almost more frightening than his sudden, explosive furies. The entire court revolves around the stinking, hideously painful decay of his body, knowing the end is coming soon but also knowing it is treason to say so.

Law joins the pantheon of great screen Henry VIIIs, up there with Robert Shaw and Richard Burton.

But Alicia Vikander as Queen Katherine is, if anything, even better. The king is larger than life, so the queen’s job is to make her personality vanish into the shell of her role.

Vikander’s queen is steely and immensely calm, keeping her head when all around are in imminent danger of losing theirs. She finds the right steps to remain a beat ahead of danger in the snakes’ dance of the court, and does so with regal stillness and dignity. Yet, she still manages to pursue the dangerous religious ideals that her enemies are so keen to use against her.

All of this is true enough to the real people. So too is the portrayal of how, with real warmth, Queen Katherine gathered her three orphaned stepchildren — the future monarchs Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I — into a family of sorts, providing a shelter from the court’s vultures and from their terrifying father. Alongside Law and Vikander, the film’s breakout star is Junia Rees as the teenage Princess Elizabeth: sharp but sometimes recklessly defiant, utterly without illusions about the king.

So all this is a joy to watch. Simon Russell Beale’s insidious Bishop Gardiner is as good as you’d expect. Sam Riley does a very creditable Thomas Seymour, despite being festooned with ginger whiskers that look like a startled flying squirrel. The whole thing throbs with paranoia.

A fatal final act

I did regret some missed opportunities. The first half-hour hinges on the relationship between the queen and the protestant radical Anne Askew, a connection that is rumoured in the real history and fleshed out here.

Askew, who like Queen Katherine herself was one of the first Englishwomen to be a published author, could have been a terrific character. The real Askew was bold, cunning, sharp-tongued and immensely brave, staying silent under torture rather than betraying her allies and supporters. But she appears here in a couple of scenes as a bug-eyed zealot calling for bloody revolution, and is then unceremoniously executed off-camera.

While I get that we’re supposed to feel how the casual delivery of this news shocked the queen, I still feel it’s a waste of a potentially compelling character.

And then…well, no spoilers about the ending, but let’s just say it’s bonkers. I haven’t seen a historical film that played faster and looser with real events since Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). Maybe I just need to get over that, but my wife, who isn’t nearly as marinated in the history as I am, was also agog with disbelief.

Really, I don’t mind that they made stuff up. It’s historical fiction: that’s the name of the game. But the queen’s actions in the film’s final stretch are wildly out of keeping with the character we’ve spent two hours learning to respect. It feels as if the filmmakers, having ramped up the sense of danger far beyond the level it actually reached in 1546, could not think of a way out that would not feel anticlimactic — so they jumped the shark instead.

I’d recommend treating this movie like you would the actual court of Henry VIII. It’s well worth a visit. You will really enjoy the spectacle, the atmosphere, the personalities. But slip out before the end — otherwise you risk being caught up in something you’re better off not having seen.

The writer is a Professor of the History of Christianity at the Durham University in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 15th, 2024