EGN NEWS DESK
Midway via Karim Aïnouz’s “Firebrand,” King Henry VIII of England takes a break from enjoying bowls on the garden to stroll along with his sixth spouse, Katherine Parr. Gripping her arm tightly, limping closely, the king, performed with terrifying menace by Jude Law, provides a menace to those that betray him. “They know what would occur,” he says quietly, turning to face the queen. “We’d need to have their head reduce off.” Alicia Vikander’s Queen Katherine smiles faintly. “I’m certain you’d give you one thing far more artistic,” she says.
“Firebrand,” which is predicated on the Elizabeth Freemantle novel “Queen’s Gambit” and opens Friday, is ready throughout Henry’s ultimate months, in 1546-1547. Katherine is attempting to maintain her head on her shoulders whereas the king, in poor health, paranoid and indignant, grows more and more suspicious of her alliance with non secular reformers. Egged on by the poison-drip whisperings of the power-hungry bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale), who fears Katherine’s progressive leanings, a witch-hunt begins in an effort to convict her of heresy and treason.
“I considered it as a thriller,” stated Aïnouz, 58, by cellphone final month from the Cannes Film Festival, the place his film, “Motel Destino,” was in competitors. “There are so many tales in regards to the wives who perished below Henry. Katherine was older, politically astute, mental, rebellious. She survived. And but there have been no films about her. This was a strategy to write historical past that wasn’t about dead ladies.”
Many individuals coming to the film will know that Parr survived Henry, however not “what a battle of wills that survival entailed,” Tim Robey wrote in The Telegraph, after the movie was proven in competitors at Cannes final 12 months. “This pungent, meaty historic drama posits them as mortal enemies not simply within the home sphere: ideologically, they have been on completely different pages of separate Bibles.”
