"Spencer" review — Kristen Stewart shines as the Princess of Wales
“Will they kill me, do you think?”
This film was featured in my Best Films of 2021 list.
It’s not easy being a stranger. In the ten years since her marriage into one of the most powerful families in the world, Diana Spencer still doesn’t feel like she belongs. She can’t bear their stuffy, overbearing attitudes. The only people she can trust are her two young sons who are deeply unprepared to be handling the state their mother is in. Diana is slowly beginning to crack under the pressure. As she drives alone into the English countryside to spend the weekend with her in-laws, she cannot so much as a stop at a gas station for direction without being brought into her role as a symbol for the nation.
The royal Christmas celebration brings the Windsor family together at Sandringham House. The several-hundred-year-old house harbours deep connections to the family’s history and soon, that history begins to hold Diana hostage. She’s visited in the night by hallucinations of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII who was eventually wrongly beheaded for treason. Maybe the family will kill her, too. Maybe the standards of being a member of the Windsor family will kill her. Perhaps she will have to kill the part of herself that is still Diana Spencer to become the symbol they all want her to be: the future face on the ten-pound note. Then there’s the boarded-up neighbouring house, the corpse of Diana’s childhood home, that she can see from her bedroom window. The past is pulling her in.
She has to survive three days. That’s all.
There’s been a recent revival in the tragedy of Diana Spencer. It’s been depicted to great acclaim in the television series The Crown and great rebuke in the recent Diana: The Musical. It’s no wonder that Diana has remained so firmly in the public conscious. The story of “the People’s Princess” plays out like a Shakespearean drama brought to life. What began as a fairytale-esque romance of a prince and a common girl later came crumbling to the ground exposing the dark side of one of England’s oldest and most revered institutions.
In his “fable based on a true tragedy,” director Pablo Larraín distills all of the drama of Diana’s life into a turbulent three-day stretch. Armed with a clever, concise script from Steven Knight and a truly otherworldly performance from star Kristen Stewart, Larraín’s film is a sympathetic, strange take on the Princess of Wales’ life. Spencer is a deeply internal film and will be off-putting to many. While Spencer does not promise to be palatable, it is a fascinating and compelling work of psychological filmmaking. Although perhaps, at times, a little too on the nose with its themes, Stewart’s performance and the brilliant creative elements from Larraín and his team, most notable the unique jazz score and the beautiful, dreamy cinematography, make Spencer into something truly unique.
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| Diana and her sons. © Neon 2021. |
Spencer is shot with soft lighting and grainy photography, keeping the semblance of the fable it wants to be. Yet, the camera work and uneasy editing work push the film further into the realm of a psychological thriller than royal biography. The film is shot by French cinematographer Claire Mathon who is coming to the film after the success of the visually stunning Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). Mathon’s work is as beautiful as ever. Spencer’s photography is airy and mysterious making the perfect blend between the film’s complicated tones.
The film’s jazzy score is composed by Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood. Greenwood has been scoring narrative films since There Will Be Blood in 2007 and his work has only grown more prolific in recent years. Greenwood also composed the score for Jane Campion’s brilliant film The Power of the Dog, which arrives in a week on Netflix. Spencer’s score is as disorienting and powerful as the rest of the film. The jarring strings and blaring brass are at once beautiful and disruptive and totally overwhelms the rest of the filmmaking. Greenwood evokes notes of baroque music with his occasional and specific use of the organ and the harpsichord. The score is traditional in many ways, but its offset by deeply disturbing arrangements and clashing sounds.
The crown jewel of the entire piece is the otherworldly, transformative performance from star Kristen Stewart. Stewart delivers one of the best performances, and I am tempted to go as far as to say the best performance, of the year in Spencer. Stewart perfectly embodies the hopelessness of Diana’s damaged state. Stewart shows off the full range of her abilities here through her quiet and not-so-quiet discomfort at her present state. The performance is destined to be a powerful force in this year’s awards circuit and deservedly so. Stewart is heartbreaking and moving and encapsulates the nuance of the character perfectly.
Spencer is a movie all about the past. As Diana floats aimlessly through the house that never changes, she finds herself unprotected from the ghosts of past lives. She’s followed by the memories of her ten years as royalty and the ghosts of the dead that permeate the halls. “Past and future are the same thing here,” she says to her children. She needs to break free. She needs to break the pearls. Ultimately, Diana wants to reclaim who she once was. When she was married, her identity was lost. She was no longer Diana Spencer, but Diana, Princess of Wales. She is a symbol and a currency.
“The thing is, Diana,” her husband says, “there has to be two of you. There's the real one and the one they take pictures of.” But that’s not the life Diana wants. It’s all for the “good of the country,” but what about her good? Is the cost worth it? Can she be Diana Spencer again?
Three days can change a lot.
Score: 4.5
Spencer is now playing in theatres and available through premium video-on-demand.
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