IT MAY seem strange, watching Firebrand (Cert. 15), set in the Tudor period, that holy scripture in the vernacular risked imprisonment, torture, and horrifying death — or that it is linked to basic human rights, for both men and women. This gory tale has relevance to our present world, while there remain situations where corresponding acts of protest reap fearful consequences for advocates of change.

The opening credits freely acknowledge that we know little about some of those exponents of reform, especially if they were female. The film centres on the relationship between Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander) and the ailing King Henry VIII (Jude Law). She became his sixth wife in 1543, and he appointed her regent in his absence the following year. At this point, the director, Karim Aïnouz, picks up the story.

We witness Katherine quietly proposing to Privy Counsellors (decamped to Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, because of the plague) a new commission to explore the consequences of having allowed the commoners to hear the Bible in their own tongue. Bishop Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell-Beale), the King’s secretary, is appalled, even though there is a strong case for its having had a unifying effect on the King’s subjects. We come to recognise this moment as the opening salvo in a power struggle between highly traditional Catholicism and emerging Protestant views.

Katherine composed several prayer books in English, being the first queen to do so. Seen in some quarters as promoting Reformation ideas, she (at least, according to Firebrand) was, furthermore, threatened by associating with Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), an itinerant proponent of free speech, who took universal access to the Bible as key to creating a just society.

Katherine walks a tightrope between not antagonising the King and being true to her religious convictions. She believes that God chose her to change Henry’s mind. Gardiner is her nemesis. Women, he declares, have no more business with the scriptures than a pig has with a saddle. To this, one of the Queen’s loyal women-in-waiting retorts “Better a pig with a saddle than an ass with a mitre.” Strangely absent from the film is Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Queen’s confidant, who who encouraged her pursuit of a religious outlook at odds with Gardiner’s. Nor is anything made of the complexity of Henry’s own beliefs.

There are powerful performances by all concerned. Law establishes his own understanding of the monarch without being in the shadow of Charles Laughton, Richard Burton, Keith Michel, or Robert Shaw. Possibly it was easier for Alicia Vikander to make her individual mark without too many comparisons. The screenplay takes a sympathetic view of Katherine, in keeping with the likes of writers David Starkey, Antonia Fraser, et al.

Firebrand is at its best when exploring how Reformation values undermined patriarchal rule. Time and again, various characters’ outright certainty is revealed as fear that an alternative vision will destroy them. Nobody seems to consider it possible that they may be mistaken, not even Katherine. This kind of faith leaves no room for honest doubt.