Law reportedly donned a special perfume that stank of rotting flesh to play Henry VIII in Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, a nod to an open wound that went unaddressed for the Tudor king’s last decade IRL. He disappears within the hulking monarch, all while cleverly avoiding caricature. It’s a gross performance—his version of Henry cannot keep his hands to himself, poking and prodding at the orifices aplenty—and one that feels impressively distinct from anything Law had done before.
2) The Nest (2020)
©IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Collection
Criminally underseen when it came out in August 2021—though COVID had much to do with that—Law plays an ambitious trader, Rory O’Hara, in The Nest who moves his family to a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of London after he finds a new job in the capital. He is a volatile man, envious of the monied people in his orbit; the film is an eerie, tragic meditation on social mobility and insecurity about your own place in life. He projects himself as the image of wealth, but when it comes to pass that it’s a mirage, and his bank account is empty, it falls to his wife (Carrie Coon) to pick up the pieces.
1) Closer (2004)
©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Mike Nichols’ classic relationship drama centres on four of the worst people you’ll ever meet who cheat on each other endlessly and, frankly, hate themselves. Law plays Dan, a writer who pursues Alice (Natalie Portman) but soon finds himself wanting a go with Anna (Julia Roberts)—he’s probably the worst of the bunch. At its best, Closer reaches for a deeper truth about adult relationships that we all privately acknowledge but try to ignore, for our own sanity: that every couple is hanging together by a thread.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
