Written by Haylee Gemeiner, Photo courtesy of Komplizen Film
With a mesmerizing performance by Kristen Stewart, Pablo Larraín’s ‘Spencer’ takes place over the Christmas holiday at Sandringham palace in 1991, which resulted in Princess Diana’s decision to leave Prince Charles. Frustrated by the outdated traditions and theatrics of royalty, ostracized for her reluctance to submit to the crown’s will and spiraling for an ounce of control in her life—Larraín and Stewart reimagine what Diana might have gone through during the three-day holiday in this atmospheric biopic.
We first see Diana speeding through back-country roads, getting lost and taking a few detours before arriving late to Sandringham palace. In the following days, Diana clashes with palace staff and other royals, and other than the time she spends with her sons, she spends most of her time alone—uninterested in keeping up niceties with others and interacting with her husband.
When a book appears in her room on Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England wrongly condemned by the English monarchy and subsequently executed, Diana concludes it wasn’t a coincidence but a warning. She is haunted by Anne Boleyn and grows paranoid that she will share the same fate. “Will they kill me, you think?” she asked a member of the palace staff. It doesn’t matter what response she gets, she seems to already know the answer.
While ‘Spencer’ lacks in verifiable truths, it fills in the blanks to communicate something very clearly, Diana was human. Several times throughout the film, Diana’s actions were most easily defined as frustrating and even pitiful. In those moments, Stewart’s riveting performance didn’t show us a bratty noble or a victim, but a woman who was suffering. The portrayal of Diana’s eating disorder, self-harm and psychosis, even if dramatized for the sake of a compelling narrative, reminds us of what the people’s princess was most known for—the kinship people felt with her.
During an argument, Prince Charles said to Diana, “You have to be able to make your body do things that you hate… For the good of the country. For the people… They don’t want us to be people.” The notion that royalty and celebrities are not people or do not have autonomy over their own bodies is archaic but also maintained through tradition and acceptance. Charles was resolute in his fate. Diana was not and she was both praised for her authenticity and criticized for her defiance.
Larraín’s ‘Spencer’ is aware of the fiction it imposes on the historical narrative around Princess Diana. Still, at end of the film, Diana doesn’t confront the royal family. She decides to run away from the gilded cage with her boys and we are compelled by all the imperfect parts of her that make her more within our reach than she ever was to the crown. ‘Spencer’ doesn’t dramatize Diana to make a martyr or a symbol out of her, but to simply show how she longed to be treated with compassion, as a human being.
