My knowledge of Princess Diana is pretty limited. She died when I was 10. That’s old enough to understand how extremely famous she was but young enough to miss out on the specifics. I was never that interested in the royals in general either, so most of what I know about Diana has been recently acquired from The Crown and the Wikipedia dives that has inspired. Given that I had much the same experience with Jacqueline Kennedy, I was excited to hear that Pablo Larrain was following up Jackie with a Diana film. I’m firmly in the pro-Jackie camp. I love Natalie Portman’s performance. I loved the almost off-putting score. I loved the limited scope of the story. Well, Spencer also has a Portman-caliber actress, has another aggressive score, and covers only a single weekend. However, I didn’t like Spencer as much.
The most important thing to say early is that Spencer isn’t a biopic. A title card in the film calls it a fable. This is not intended to reflect an actual weekend Diana lived. At most, it’s a representative weekend. At least, it’s a mood piece of an interpretation of Diana. It’s set during the latter stages of her marriage. She’s going to a country estate where the royal family celebrate Christmas. Diana, played by Kristen Stewart, is feeling the confines of her life. Everywhere she goes she is recognized and gawked at. She feels just as uncomfortable with the Royal family, who haven’t let her into the inner-circle. They try to micro-manage everything about her. Spencer is the story of a woman who feels trapped. The film strongly references Diana’s history of bulimia. In this, it’s her only way to exert control over her life. It’s not flattering. I’m not even sure to what level it’s accurate. It makes its point though.
Stewart is really fantastic, especially since she’s rarely playing off anyone. Even when she’s talking to members of the royal family, they all sound like NPCs in a game who deliver set dialogue or disapproving looks. Stewart carries it anyway. Weirdly, since Charlie’s Angels she’s really established herself as one of my favorite screen presences. The only people she really interacts with in this are her sons, the estate’s chef (Sean Harris), the head butler (Timothy Spall), and her dresser (Sally Hawkins). Harris, Spall, and Hawkins almost feel like her Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, all serving a specific purpose for her over the weekend.
I was lower on the movie as a whole than I wanted to be*. It’s kind of an unpleasant movie. Diana is on the edge of a mental breakdown for most of it. The tone was bipolar, ranging from practically a horror movie to something like a RomCom. I didn’t care for this score either. It called too much attention to itself in all the wrong ways. I’m not that sure what the movie was trying to say either. It hits the beats of Diana having no control over her life a lot. It doesn’t develop them that much. On paper, a lot of these things also describe Jackie, which I preferred a lot. The best difference I can point to is that Jackie has Jackie giving an interview as the framing device, which lets her take more control. In Spencer, Diana is hopelessly trapped and basically has to fantasize about getting away. It didn’t work for me. Or, perhaps it worked but in a way I found too repellent to enjoy the merits.
*Full Disclosure: I had a huge fit of restlessness while watching this. I could not sit still and badly wanted to get up and move around. Perhaps that was a result of the elements in the movie. It is a movie about feeling trapped after all. Maybe it was working really well on me. Or maybe it was a Sour Patch Kids high. I honestly don’t know. It made it incredibly hard to focus though. This almost never happens when I’m seeing a movie. I just want to own up to possibly external forces hurting my opinion of the movie.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment