The nuanced performance of Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, the psychological interpretation of Director Pablo Larraín, and the mystery of what happens behind closed doors are exactly why the film medium was created in the first place: These components call for a multi-sensory experience of what could be safely read but valued more when felt.
Documented history in school textbooks is one thing; historical fiction is a human thing. Did a seven-year-old Diana Spencer really clothe a scarecrow with her father’s tattered hunting jacket? Probably not. But, when we observe Diana longing for her father’s company when she revisits the scarecrow as a lonely, suppressed adult, we draw closer to her.
Spencer takes place in 1991 at the queen’s Sandringham county estate, roughly one year before Diana and Prince Charles formally separate. This cinematically conceived Princess Diana is consumed by a superficially luxurious lifestyle and a coldness of in-law pressure, forced tradition (weighing yourself before and after the Christmas feast), a suffocating necklace of pearls, and sealed window shades to avoid any paparazzi photographs. Essentially, the estate is a claustrophobic, Kubrickian prison in which Diana can only seek refuge in her two sons, William and Harry.
Pablo Larraín’s re-imagination of a three-day Christmas holiday gathering encapsulates the past, present, and future of the Princess Diana saga most of the world interpreted through pictures (much like Danny Boyle and Michael Fassbender’s interpretation of Steve Jobs during three pivotal product launches). In elementary school, I would see photos of Diana and Charles in my mom’s weekly People magazine subscriptions. “She doesn’t look happy,” was my foregone conclusion as a kid. Call it unfair or speculation – it was the world’s most obsessed perception.
Facts and documentation aside, Pablo Larraín successfully captures the spiritual liberation of Princess Diana with less a biopic lens and more an impressionistic brush stroke. Like Natalie Portman in Jackie (2016), Kristen Stewart is Larraín’s muse for painting expressions of sympathetic understanding. Like Jonny Greenwood’s jazzy, dissonant score, nothing is linear here. There is no resolution.
These are moments, visual vignettes, and nothing more. Yet, the whispers and tilted head of subtle despair say it all.
For Stewart’s masterful performance and Larraín’s companion camera, Spencer is worth a look at what possibly happened behind this iconic figure’s door.
**** out of *****
Reely Bernie 
Mixed feelings about this; Stewart is great as ever, but unlike Jackie, the details just seemed fantastic. Diana was vilified by the press here, she hated them, she was passionate about her landmine campaign, so all of these elements are somehow the wrong way around. She wasn;t a normal woman who wanted to take her kids for KFC, she was not a commoner at all and was well used to the airs and graces and posho lifestyle that she’s portrayed as being foreign to in this film. Interesting to hear how this went down in the US!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m grateful for your UK perspective on Diana and several interpretations and liberties this movie pursued. The claustrophobic/family indifferences seemed spot-on as an American middle-schooler looking in the royalty crystal ball from the outside (and across the ocean). But, I can see where liberties can skew the observations/realities of someone who lived in the very country at the very time. As an experience, not a biopic, I think Larraín was audaciously creative. Did Steve Jobs ever want his computer to say “Hello” to the point of unhealthy obsession and abuse? No. It’s never been documented like that. Did that first scene in Danny Boyle’s pet project capture the egotistical genius that was Steve Jobs? Absolutely. The scarecrow in Spencer was a haunting touch 🙂 Thank you, as always, for your thorough movie reviews and visit to my blog. I’m loving being a new dad, but the last month gave me lots of gray hair. Our daughter caught RSV and had to be hospitalized for a week. Thank God, she is doing much better and enjoyed her family during Thanksgiving. (Hospital movies and the Hallmark Channel just aren’t the same.) Be well across the ocean!
LikeLike
It looks interesting Bernie. I’ll never forget that weekend she was killed. I was in West Virginia visiting the in laws.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So tragic. I visited the highway tunnel sight of the accident in Paris. Such an icon. So much mystery too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The tunnel looks really small on Television. The press should NOT have followed them like that but they shouldn’t have taken off either.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was. Such an odd event because it felt preordained in an inexplicable way…
LikeLiked by 1 person
It didn’t hit me until later…the scope of it.
LikeLike