Mark Reviews Movies: SPENCER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 4, 2021

Surely, Diana, Princess of Wales, had a few sleepless nights, likely upon entering the royal family of the United Kingdom, as the wife to the man in line to become the next king, and within some period of time leading up to her very public separation from Prince Charles. The Diana we know, from her outward appearance and her philanthropic work, is nowhere to be seen in Spencer. It's a movie that's exclusively about those hypothetical nights of uncertainty and regret.

The idea of Steven Knight's screenplay, which follows Diana (Kristen Stewart) over a three-day Christmas holiday with most of the royal family, is sound enough. The legacy of the "People's Princess" has only become more solidified in the 24 years since her tragic death. It's a legacy of glamour and kind-heartedness. Whatever rumors and upheaval that defined much of the public perception surrounding her in the early 1990s have mostly dropped to become a footnote.

She died. The royal family more or less moved on toward increasing irrelevance, save for lives and marriages of Diana's two sons, both of whom, to varying degrees, seem content to abandon tradition and appear set to move the royal family into whatever it will become soon enough.

Knight and director Pablo Larraín's movie exists entirely among and within that period of gossip and turmoil. Set within one of the Queen's grand estates, a constantly upset Diana tries to navigate her way through the holidays, suspecting that everyone in her family-by-marriage is out to get her in some vaguely sinister way.

She stalks the halls of Sandringham House (The royals are good at, if anything, understatement), near the place where she was raised, in scenes of terror, resentment, and hallucination. Diana fears that people believe her to have gone mad, and the movie, which allows its paranoid mood and internalized narrative to overwhelm any other sense of the character, doesn't dissuade anyone, especially us, of that notion.

Clearly, the goal here is to present Diana as a wounded soul—driven to deep distrust and an eating disorder, as well as some other self-destructive behaviors, and evading her family (save for her sons, obviously)—who eventually channels that pain to become something of a rebel among the stuffy and fake world of the royals. That evolution, though, only arrives at the movie's end. Until then, Diana spends this story wandering the halls, making cryptic statements to the staff, vomiting after every meal she doesn't skip, and imagining the ghost of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson), the doomed second wife of Henry VIII, offering portents of doom.

It's a deliberate choice, presented with a significant command of craft and tone by Larraín. With scene after scene of Diana's torment and disillusionment, we can't help but wonder if this is the correct choice—or even a particularly worthwhile one.

Diana arrives late to the estate, as is her custom during this stay, after becoming lost along the country roads and stopping a local diner, where customers offer stunned stares and murmurs. The alleged festivities at Sandringham House include multiple meals, a trip to church, an official photograph, a television viewing of the annual speech by the Queen (Stella Gonet), and pheasant hunting. Diana's schedule and wardrobe have been prepared in advance, including a pearl necklace that's identical to the one her husband Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) bought for the woman rumored to be his mistress.

The princess can only confide her true feelings to her personal dresser Maggie (Sally Hawkins). The royals' head chef (played by Sean Harris) warns Diana that such talks can become downstairs gossip, and the ever-present Major Gregory (Timothy Spall), the officer of the house, is always watching and listening for signs for trouble. Diana is convinced that he and everyone only see her as potential trouble.

All of this is a decidedly one-note affair, but to be fair, Larraín plays that note with such confidence that there's at least some stylistic nuance to it. Lengthy tracking shots and imposing close-ups and moments of disjointed editing put us within Diana's confined and anguished mindset, while Jonny Greenwood's score (moving from jazzy horns underlined by a cacophony of percussion to other dissonant tones) punctuates that feeling. The manor, with its long halls and chambers ornately decorated, becomes a lavish but chilly prison, and at night, with Diana trying to find her way back to her now boarded-up childhood home, the grounds are obscured by a dense layer of fog.

Stewart's performance is admirable in the way it reflects the movie's own brand of showy restraint. She's not so much playing Princess Diana here (although the prim-and-proper physicality and soft voice offer some authenticity in that regard), as much as she's portraying fear-stricken protagonist in the horror tale that has become her life. Some quieter moments, removed from the oppressive through line of the narrative (the scene at the diner, some pleasant talk with her sons, and the story's eventual turn toward Diana's freedom), do suggest that Stewart understands this character as more than what mostly see of her. Otherwise, she serves the constraints of the script well.

Spencer doesn't help us to understand Princess Diana in any tangibly human way. She's basically a concept here—of fame and power crushing the sparks of life and hope. In a generally intriguing but superficial way, the movie itself is a crushing experience.

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