Firebrand

2023

So that you don’t have to watch this movie, I have properly “spoiled” it for you. Fair warning.

As a movie watcher, you’ve got to take chances if you hope to trip over an overlooked masterpiece. Despite Jude Law and Alicia Vikander being two of my favorite actors, this film was a chance that did not pay off.

It’s lovely in costuming and design, and the acting is, of course, good, but the story is neither subtle nor true. I will always defend an artist’s right to use historical figures and events in thoughtful fictional ways...as long as there is a reason and a level of art that justify that decision. Shakespeare In Love used a million scholarly in-jokes to create a Shakespearean comedy. Inglourious Basterds used the iconography of WWII to tell a thrilling story of resistance to evil regimes and delivered some Grade-A historical wish-fulfillment. Firebrand, however, uses a trite feminist aphorism (that seems to have been invented by the director) as an excuse to tell a tediously obvious tale of the silencing of women and their ability to manipulate events from behind the scenes, as both the real powers and real victims of Western history. Never mind that its narrative is complete fiction. An opening and closing voiceover by the teenage Elizabeth proclaims this as true history, and no one could argue with QEI.

However, from the start, it’s a shakily constructed alternate history. Katherin Parr had no known connection to Anne Askew at all. She was certainly never arrested nor imprisoned in the Tower of London for helping her (or for any other reason). That leaves the final act of violence (Katherine’s murder of Henry VIII) as the only thing that has any chance of being true--and that chance is low.

When you mix the complete fabrication of the plot with the banal images of men silencing women (gee, what’s on the poster?), it just all comes to very little. No doubt Parr would be an interesting character to study, but don’t look for any truth herein.

Playing with history is a responsibility, not a privilege, if an artist takes it on. It has to be an inspired choice with a bit of élan to it. It needs to be backed up by solid artistry. (These same things are true for the use of graphic violence, language, or sexuality.) Firebrand does not deliver any of that. It’s a told-before-in-a-thousand-guises feminist fable that takes advantage of Americans’ lack of familiarity with British history.

It might be a 2-star film, but my eyerolling indignation takes it down a peg.