REVIEW — SPENCER
By Eoin O’Donnell
“You are your own weapon; don’t cut it to pieces”.
This is the line that most resonates in Pablo Larraín ‘s tender, tragic but often playful portrait of a complex woman. is not an elegant, respectful stroll through Buckingham Palace; it’s an irreverent upending of the hierarchy and a violent disruption of the established narrative when it comes to the royals.
Much as the title implies, Spencer is a liberation of Diana’s story from the clutches of those who drove her to her death, re-claiming her humanity and warmth through a story that values no perspective but her own. While many might have wanted or expected a tender family drama featuring all their favourite highnesses and majesties, Larraín and writer Steven Knight re-imagine Diana’s story as a Shakespearean tragedy in the visage of Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour: the ‘ghosts of Windsor past’ who visit her at night to warn her away from the poisonous, irredeemable disease that is the royal family, before she too loses her head.
Kristen Stewart ‘s Diana is genuinely remarkable, and whilst there’s certainly an ‘adjusting’ period of recognizing the trademark facial cues and speech patterns of an actor who, in a lot of ways, couldn’t be more different from their subject, it lends a dimension of endearing authenticity to her performance that a ‘perfect’ impersonation of a real person almost certainly couldn’t accomplish. It exhibits Diana’s unique humanity and kindness, but also doesn’t shy away from her struggles with her mental health, self harm and bulimia. Diana is ill, and only growing sicker by the day while trapped in a loveless, manipulative marriage. Diana regards herself as ‘currency’, to be looked at and used, but never listened to, her beauty and disruption her only means of fighting back.
The film takes place over a single weekend, and not even a particularly dramatic one for the history books at that, but rather the one where she decides to reclaim her womanhood and independence by rejecting her husband, his family, and all the baggage that goes along with it. It might be completely farcical, and royal experts and correspondents will no doubt be positively livid by the blasphemy exhibited in pitting their queen and her heir as villains, but that’s far from important. Just as Stewart’s Diana isn’t a carbon copy, Larraín’s vision of her is only an interpretation, one that’s incredibly compelling, and more than a bit believable.
Coming from a country whose relationship with the royal family is… complex, to say the least, I was more than ready to disregard Spencer as another vain, indulgently glamorous and emotionally manipulative tale of a wealthy heiress. Instead, much like he did with , Larraín’s film separates a woman afflicted by tragedy almost entirely from the complicated men and traumas that defined her, liberates her story as her own and delivers a complete, gorgeous tapestry of a character study, one which implores you to find the joy and beauty in the midst of an abundance of ugliness.
Originally published at https://27timescinema.cineuropa.org on September 9, 2021, at the 78th International Venice Film Festival