Spencer – first-look review

With films such as Tony Manero and Post Mortem, Chilean film­mak­er Pablo Lar­raín has made a name for him­self as a pur­vey­or of bleak sur­veys of life under dic­ta­tor­ship con­di­tions that fore­ground ter­ror, oppres­sion and sud­den violence.

With Spencer, his strange psy­cho­log­i­cal fable about the late Diana Spencer over an espe­cial­ly tense Christ­mas sea­son at the roy­al San­dring­ham estate, he presents the British monar­chy as a daffy total­i­tar­i­an enclave, steeped in tra­di­tions which only serve to extend their old world shelf life and fil­ter them out from the plebs. It is an under­state­ment to say that many liv­ing roy­als – includ­ing the cur­rent regent – do not come off well in this film.

The lit­tle white mouse in the maze of inhu­mane her­itage think­ing is Kris­ten Stewart’s per­fect­ly-accent­ed and effort­less­ly glam­orous Diana, and the film charts her var­i­ous strained attempts to break free of these sti­fling con­di­tions. There are wicked whis­pers that she has ​“cracked”, and even the cur­tains have been sewn shut to stop the paparazzi from spy­ing on her. The place­ment of a biog­ra­phy of Anne Boleyn by her bed­side leads to spec­tral visions of the behead­ed damsel, and the film asks us to ques­tion whether Diana’s frayed mind­set is jus­ti­fied under the circumstances.

The script by Steven Knight is prob­lem­at­ic from the get-go, packed with lots of wink­ing pop psy­chol­o­gy and on-the-nose por­tent, and clear­ly writ­ten with future tragedy in mind. Its main infrac­tion, though, is that it is often wit­less and banal, leav­ing Lar­raín and the actors to hero­ical­ly milk the dra­ma from a string of inter­ac­tions that are either over­stuffed with ​“mean­ing”, or just death­ly dull.

The notion that Diana har­boured a not-so-secret desire for mid­dle class nor­mal­cy and was dri­ven to mad­ness by so much pomp, pageantry and silent abuse is not exact­ly a new rev­e­la­tion. And yet the film oper­ates as if it has stum­bled onto box-fresh insights, which in turn leaves you wait­ing to dis­cov­er what the real take is. And it nev­er comes.

Unlike the mael­strom of emo­tions in Larraín’s pre­vi­ous, and sim­i­lar­ly-cal­i­brat­ed celebri­ty por­trait pic, Jack­ie, this one is slow­er, lin­ear and more aus­tere, bet­ter to fit the gen­teel and reg­i­ment­ed-to-death con­text of a Yule­tide with Her Majesty. On paper Stew­art seemed like an eccen­tric cast­ing choice, yet she slinks into the mate­r­i­al with grace and ease, and her trade­mark arse­nal of half-met glares and anx­i­ety-dashed gri­maces per­fect­ly express her des­per­ate yearn­ing to be free of pret­ti­fied toff prison. Her inter­ac­tions with Sal­ly Hawkins’ bowl-cut­ted per­son­al dress­er, Mag­gie, are an obvi­ous highlight.

The film recalls both Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, in its ele­gant­ly decked-out dis­sec­tion of clois­tered enti­tle­ment, and Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, in its depic­tion of a per­son being dri­ven stir crazy by her claus­tro­pho­bic sur­round­ings (as well as being bul­lied by her hus­band). The lat­ter com­par­i­son is empha­sised by Jon­ny Greenwood’s bril­liant but some­times heavy-hand­ed score which deft­ly com­bines prim, din­ner­time min­uettes with clang­ing aton­al dirges.

Spencer is a sad and hope­less film, and it shows the point where Diana can now see through the plat­i­tudes that have helped her sur­vive so far. It’s also hard to tru­ly under­stand the nature of Diana’s trag­ic melt­down with­out first know­ing that she was once hap­py – some­thing that the film pur­pose­ly omits. There are some moments of euphor­ic release in the lat­ter stages, a lit­tle like when Mar­i­lyn Cham­bers escapes the Leather­face house at the end of The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre, but again, the feel like grist to tragedy porn mill, writ­ten only with heart­break­ing hind­sight in mind.

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