Photo: Brad Balfour
Story by Brad Balfour
Film: “Firebrand”
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Simon Russell Beale, Sam Riley, Erin Doherty
When veteran Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz decided to make his English-language cinematic debut, he couldn’t have picked a more difficult challenge. He set out to make an English-history period film about the last days of controversial British King Henry VIII (Jude Law) and the wife who survived him, Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander). As the last of his six wives, Catherine [sometimes spelled with a K] was the final queen consort of the House of Tudor. She outlived Henry by a year and eight months. With four husbands, she was also the most-married English queen and the first woman in England to publish in print an original work under her own name.
In blood-soaked Tudor England, the accomplished and educated Parr reluctantly agrees to become the tyrannical king’s sixth wife. Her consent to marry him carried great personal risk, given that her predecessors were either vanquished, beheaded, or dead depending on his hot temper and whim. When Henry departs to fight overseas, he lays a dangerous path for her as Regent, the nation’s ruler during his absence. Henry’s courtiers, suspecting she’s sympathetic to radical Protestant beliefs, scheme against her and cast doubts upon her fidelity to the increasingly ailing and paranoid king.
Once Henry returns to England, his courtiers convince him to turn his fury on the nation’s radicals, including Anne Askew, one of Catherine’s childhood friends. She’s one of the scores of people convicted of treason and burned at the stake. Horrified and grieving, Catherine finds herself under ever-increasing scrutiny and suspicion. Knowing that even a whisper of scandal might lead to her downfall, Catherine schemes to fight for survival on her own terms — and does so with a vengeance.
To make this film plausible, director Aïnouz turned to top-flight, award-winning actors such as Law and Vikander. Through their voluminous talents, along with precise cinematography and production design, the film is a compelling tale of a forceful woman surviving in a treacherous world.
What you are reading now is based on an edited transcript of the Q&A held after the film’s Tribeca Festival debut.
Q: Karim, you’ve had such an illustrious, amazing career up to this point. Why was this your first English-language project and what drew you to this film?
Karim Aïnouz: I think the first thing that drew me to the film was its producer, an incredible woman who was passionate about Katherine Parr. What really made me want to do it was seeing a woman who had done amazing things in history but had never been portrayed properly in cinema. It’s great when a filmmaker finds a subject or a character that needs to exist on screen. That’s what made me jump on it and want to do it.
Q: Alicia, Parr was considered a very strong and intelligent woman, yet not much was known about her. How did you go through the process of creating this character?
Alicia Vikander: I remember one thing that happened when I read the script for the first time. I went on Wikipedia and did a few hours of Googling. It was kind of remarkable, but I was also a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know much about her. I knew more about Henry’s other five wives than her. I had to find out more — she was the first woman ever to publish under her own name, and this was 500 years back. She survived and outlived Henry in the end. I think we all had a lot of information and books.
[Karim] brought in some incredible historians who did several kinds of lectures. We had some Tudor experts who showed us how to eat, walk, and dress. We took it very seriously, especially with Karim and I, who are not British. We hadn’t read about this in school in the same way and felt that we definitely had to read up on the subject as much as we could. Then, when we finally came to rehearsals, Karim wanted us very much to focus on this intimate relationship and the marriage itself.
Q: Were there certain traits of hers that you wanted to portray?
Alicia Vikander: All the things that I mentioned are those that I found so remarkable, incredible and were the things everyone brought up first. One of the biggest treasures for me was the fact that I was able to read her own words. When I read her words, it was the first time I knew she was a good nurse, a good Christian, and a good mother. But she also had such a strong temperament to see herself as also having been chosen by God. I saw her sitting on very high horses which, in one way, gave me another insight into her as a person and as a woman of that time.
Q: Jude, what drew you to play Henry VIII other than looking kind of like him [audience laughter]. He’s such a complicated and controversial figure.
Jude Law: He’d been portrayed before by so many great actors and yet this particular chapter — this little section of his life, his last years — had never been captured before I believe. Therefore, the opportunity to somehow suggest all that had come before, and then show it as it was all disappearing, was a wonderful challenge. He was still dreaming of, and aspiring to be, the lover, musician and athlete [he had been]. [Here was] this great man of promise and suddenly all of that was disappearing. I love the idea that this was flashing before his eyes as it was all about to end.
Honestly, the first conversation I had with Karim, we both looked at each other and admitted how much we didn’t know and wanted to understand. There was a sort of hunger there. What didn’t we know and what did we want to see? To see him as simply a hurdle for this amazing woman to overcome was a real challenge. I thought of a really refreshing way to approach him. To make him human and plausible and therefore all the more of a threat for her to outmaneuver. We did that rather than champion or celebrate him in some way, which history weirdly has done. It sort of smoothed the edges of his appalling behavior which I think happens time and time again. People thought they knew about him. I certainly felt I knew a sketch of him.
Q: More practically, what was the process like to get you to look like that — with the costume and make-up — and show what he was going through?
Jude Law: It was really long and slow. It started genuinely from a place of truth. How hard was it to live with these sorts of wounds? We talked to doctors who had modern references to people who live with these open venous ulcers and excruciating pain. That actually gave me great sympathy for the guy, that he was living with incredible pain which he had no painkillers for. His size and the weight, which was in a sense to me [a reflection] of his self-loathing when he felt so close to being the sportsman he had been. It’s an interesting thing with a figure like this. It’s like Charlie Chaplin or Batman. We all have a silhouette that we can picture and Henry VIII is kind of the same. As soon as I grew the right beard and got this shape and hat, we didn’t need to change much more. Actually, Henry kind of appears once you get that silhouette right. The clothes helped, like the shoulder pads.
Q: Then, through that process, you’re slowly getting the character every day with the make-up and more?
Jude Law: The make-up didn’t take long. We didn’t wear prosthetics. It was more the weight and load and size of his presence and the gait of his legs. We talked a lot about those. The big fat prosthetic legs and the pain of wearing and carrying these legs. And the smell. [audience reacts.]
Q: Karim, it’s such a beautiful period piece. It seems so lush from the cinematography to the production design. Talk about the team you assembled and the look?
Karim Aïnouz: There was one thing about this movie that, for me, was very important. I’m Brazilian, so can you imagine, when I think about it every day, what did I have in my mind? To touch such an iconic figure and choose such important characters in English history. The first thing one needs to do when we enter that terrain is to research. We did a lot of research. You know, there’s a bit of fantasy here, as you can tell. But there was also a lot of real research about what daily life was like, the temperature of the castle and so much more. I mean, ultimately, what it was really about was looking at these characters, not as royals, but as human beings like you and me.
Everything we’ve done was, on one hand, about accuracy. On the other hand, it was also stripping down the blue blood, and looking at these characters as a couple, a couple that probably didn’t choose to be together, but they were together. There was a lot of research on the costumes because in a lot of period films, one of the things that bothers me is the fabric and the way the light hits the fabric. And the way that people use the clothes and not perform in the clothes. This was really important. Also to think of color, of how one can tell a story through the color of light. The intimacy that the camera had with the characters and the actors was very, very important. It’s almost like a chronicle of that family within that place.
Q: Jude, was it true that you wore a scent through the film.
Alicia: That was true.
Jude Law: Karim creates a really… I’ve come up with a new term. He creates what I call a 360-degree scenario when he films. He creates a room. In my memory, you don’t always know where you are when filming. Sometimes, you give your best performance, and you look up, and [the director] is filming the dog. That meant sometimes we’d walk into the room, and the windows would be open, and it would be freezing, and it would be about keeping warm. We’d light a fire, or there’d be animals in the room, and animals would be all over you, and food, and the smell of smoke from the fire. We talked a lot about this. In our investigation, I read this piece saying that Henry’s legs were rotting. There was no way of treating them. You could smell him from three rooms away. I worked with this brilliant perfumier to come up with a scent that was so rank and disgusting that I covered myself in it every day.
Alicia Vikander: People ran when they saw you carrying in a box!
Jude Law: Initially, it was very modestly done. And those who came close were repelled. I’d hold the scent, covering everything in it.
Alicia Vikander: I remember when we made the scene, and the camera guy started to ….
Jude Law: But it was this scent, also, of a man demanding to be adored and looked after – who was utterly repellent to be adored. To the point of eye-watering disgust. It was sort of an extraordinary physical dance to create. It worked wonderfully well. Someone asked me when I arrived here whether I still had it. I thought, first of all, why would I keep that scent? Why would I travel with it? I have it right here [smiles].
Alicia Vikander: It’s actually a very good weapon!
Q: It’s rare to see atmosphere through performance and you’re doing it in this movie, throughout, establishing a smell that will command a certain presence across the set. It was really palpable. Everybody was together on what it felt like. It was in the body as much as it was in the setting.
Karim Aïnouz: I think the question of the body, not getting too theoretical here, was exactly what I was trying to say before. It was very important that when we look particularly in relation to a character like Henry VIII, you actually sense that there’s a body there. For example, the whole scene at the end when he’s being stripped of his organs, it was very important to me. Coming from a culture which is not based on royalty and monarchy, it was about being close to these characters. it was essential that his whole drive and energy was there. These characters are very real, no matter how far away they are from us in terms of history. There was something about the way that they delivered their performances — it was one of the things that I think helped a lot. I really hate this idea of the director. It’s a very patriarchal way of describing directing. Directing is also [about] collaborating and what the [actors] brought to these characters is really, really incredible. It was about being present.
It was also about not idolizing and thinking that these are queens and kings who are far away from us. These are people that have done harm and good to the world. It was about the smell, but it was also about the way that they move. It was very important to understand what was happening behind the public space. Within the bedrooms and so on. That was always something that we had in mind.And talking about cinematography, it was wonderful to work with the cinematographer. We’re never sort of seduced by the beauty of the costumes or the frames. It’s very tricky to do something like this. It’s sensational. You see the colors. You see the fabric. You see the jewelry. But it was really about being close to the characters and following them at every possible moment.
There were moments when I was looking at the dogs. The dogs were also very important. We talk about the smells but there’s also lots of birds in this film. There’s lots of animals here. I was also trying to capture something that film is not so good at, which is temperature — a sense of being present in a room which sometimes is very cold. Sometimes it’s very hot. All of that is to render the humanity and horror of these characters.
Q: What was the process of balancing historical accuracy with making a sort of modern story?
Karim Aïnouz: It was exciting. I think when you first ask about why this film, one of the reasons to make period films is to also talk about now. It was very important that Henry was Henry, but he was also a composite of a lot of characters that we see, sadly, too many times in the last few years. The portrait of Catherine was also a portrait of a character that we don’t see often enough. There are so many Catherines between us. Those are the two things that were really interesting to me in how to make this tale. It’s about the past, but it resonates now. It’s very interesting to me that this film is being released this year. This is a major year for this country, so I hope it resonates with all of you.
tant that Henry was Henry, but he was also a composite of a lot of characters that we see, sadly, too many times in the last few years. The portrait of Catherine was also a portrait of a character that we don’t see often enough. There are so many Catherines between us. Those are the two things that were really interesting to me in how to make this tale. It’s about the past, but it resonates now. It’s very interesting to me that this film is being released this year. This is a major year for this country, so I hope it resonates with all of you.