Spencer
Year: 2021
Director: Pablo Larrain
Starring: Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall & Kristen Stewart
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/07/22
Director: Pablo Larrain
Starring: Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall & Kristen Stewart
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/07/22
Diana, Princess of Wales is one of the most beloved members of the royal family to have ever lived, at least to the public. Her sudden and tragic death in August 1997 shook the United Kingdom, and to some effect, the entire world. Her unhappy marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales was one that garnered much public scrutiny, but for many the future Queen of England was the most down to Earth and relatable member of the royal family because of her insistence of bucking tradition for a more modern approach.
Spencer, the dramatization of a particularly tumultuous time in the princess’ life, slipped through my net at the end of last year but was something I was keen to check out. I’m not a royalist, and especially in more recent years my reservations about the monarchy have been proven time and again with scandals of racism and child sex abuse running rampant; but that’s perhaps why I was so intrigued by what Spencer was representing. It wasn’t about the royals, it was about Diana and her extremely troubled existence within an institution that didn’t want her there.
Christmas Eve 1991 and Diana (Kristen Stewart) is struggling to build up the courage to attend the annual family festivities. Charles’ (Jack Farthing) infidelity with Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emma Darwall-Smith) has recently come to light, and the increased attention from the press has placed Diana, her sons William (Jack Nielsen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), and the entire royal family under an extraordinary amount of pressure. With Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II (Stella Gonet), desperate to contain the situation and control Diana’s behaviour, the walls of Sandringham become extremely claustrophobic for Diana, and she begins to find herself losing her grip on reality.
Spencer, the dramatization of a particularly tumultuous time in the princess’ life, slipped through my net at the end of last year but was something I was keen to check out. I’m not a royalist, and especially in more recent years my reservations about the monarchy have been proven time and again with scandals of racism and child sex abuse running rampant; but that’s perhaps why I was so intrigued by what Spencer was representing. It wasn’t about the royals, it was about Diana and her extremely troubled existence within an institution that didn’t want her there.
Christmas Eve 1991 and Diana (Kristen Stewart) is struggling to build up the courage to attend the annual family festivities. Charles’ (Jack Farthing) infidelity with Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emma Darwall-Smith) has recently come to light, and the increased attention from the press has placed Diana, her sons William (Jack Nielsen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), and the entire royal family under an extraordinary amount of pressure. With Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II (Stella Gonet), desperate to contain the situation and control Diana’s behaviour, the walls of Sandringham become extremely claustrophobic for Diana, and she begins to find herself losing her grip on reality.
I went in expecting Diana to be a straightforward biopic presented from the viewpoint of the Princess herself, a semi-fictionalised account from her perspective, the tale that never got to be told. The reality was much different however, instead Spencer felt like some kind of cross between Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2018 eccentric dramady, The Favourite, and Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 psychological thriller, Black Swan. It was unexpected, jarring, and as a result I found it difficult to get myself in that kind of mindset. So, take my criticisms with a pinch of salt as the film may well have been considerably better than I’m going to give it credit for, but I feel like being prepared for how much of a mindfuck Spencer is, is the key to enjoying the film.
First off, let’s address Stewart as she received so much praise for her portrayal of Diana in this film, and was even nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Personally, in combination with the tone the film sets, I felt as though it was a caricature of Diana. Her line delivery was so breathy that I needed to turn subtitles on to make heads or tails of what was coming out of her mouth, and her constant shoulder and neck ticks made it seem as though Diana suffered from involuntary muscle spasms. Clearly, I have no idea what I’m talking about as many people who knew the Princess in real life have said the performance was uncanny, but from any footage I’ve ever seen of Diana (because let’s face it, I was two when she died, I wouldn’t remember ever seeing her on anything other than archive footage post-1997) she never spoke or spasmed like that. But Stewart isn’t bad in the role, I feel like her direction might have been a bit iffy, but she does physically convey just how uncomfortable an experience living in Sandringham for three days with people she doesn’t particularly like must have been.
First off, let’s address Stewart as she received so much praise for her portrayal of Diana in this film, and was even nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Personally, in combination with the tone the film sets, I felt as though it was a caricature of Diana. Her line delivery was so breathy that I needed to turn subtitles on to make heads or tails of what was coming out of her mouth, and her constant shoulder and neck ticks made it seem as though Diana suffered from involuntary muscle spasms. Clearly, I have no idea what I’m talking about as many people who knew the Princess in real life have said the performance was uncanny, but from any footage I’ve ever seen of Diana (because let’s face it, I was two when she died, I wouldn’t remember ever seeing her on anything other than archive footage post-1997) she never spoke or spasmed like that. But Stewart isn’t bad in the role, I feel like her direction might have been a bit iffy, but she does physically convey just how uncomfortable an experience living in Sandringham for three days with people she doesn’t particularly like must have been.
The story itself is an interesting one, concerning itself with Diana essentially beginning to lose her mind as she grapples with the family’s constant control over everything she does, and the prospect of being pushed aside in favour of Parker-Bowles. Director Pablo Larrain and writer Steven Knight very unsubtly compare Diana to Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII who was beheaded when the King grew tired of her company. For the purposes of the psychological decline of Diana in the film the comparison is quite apt, but in reality it doesn’t really work the way they envisaged it. To me, it felt like this made Diana crazy, like she was making a fuss over nothing, and that she was deluding herself into thinking she was unliked by the royal family. Was this intentional? Perhaps. It could have been done to hammer home what Charles and Elizabeth were saying to her, but for me it missed the point of what actually happened to the Princess.
What I did adore about the film though was its visual aesthetic. The whole thing looks like a photograph from the early 90’s come to life. The dreamlike soft focus, the heavy use of film grain, the pronounced earthy colours. Even a lot of the choices in how the shot was framed feel like they’ve been designed with technological limitations of the time in mind. It felt like a film made at the time it was set in, and the way that they were then able to manipulate archive footage into the mix made it all feel very seamless.
I didn’t hate Spencer, but I didn’t particularly like it either. I think because it was so far removed from what I was expecting, going so far as to border on a horror film, I simply wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate what was trying to be achieved. But trying to think about the film rationally after the fact, I’m not really sure what Larrain was trying to achieve. For me it felt as though it trivialised what the Princess was going through and painted her as the villain in her own story. I would struggle to recommend Spencer because the majority of the people who are interested in films about the royal family are unlikely to be on board with an interpretation that takes as much artistic freedom with real events as this film does.
What I did adore about the film though was its visual aesthetic. The whole thing looks like a photograph from the early 90’s come to life. The dreamlike soft focus, the heavy use of film grain, the pronounced earthy colours. Even a lot of the choices in how the shot was framed feel like they’ve been designed with technological limitations of the time in mind. It felt like a film made at the time it was set in, and the way that they were then able to manipulate archive footage into the mix made it all feel very seamless.
I didn’t hate Spencer, but I didn’t particularly like it either. I think because it was so far removed from what I was expecting, going so far as to border on a horror film, I simply wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate what was trying to be achieved. But trying to think about the film rationally after the fact, I’m not really sure what Larrain was trying to achieve. For me it felt as though it trivialised what the Princess was going through and painted her as the villain in her own story. I would struggle to recommend Spencer because the majority of the people who are interested in films about the royal family are unlikely to be on board with an interpretation that takes as much artistic freedom with real events as this film does.