Spencer
Starring Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall.
Directed by Pablo Larrain
Rating: ** ½
Was she really , now? Cracking up, I mean. That’s what the royal dresser says about Princess Diana. And the way the usually-fabulous Kristen Stewart plays her it almost seems like Lady Di is indeed cracking up.
Fact or fiction, we don’t really know. What we get to see in the film is a really fidgety and nervous Diana .At the start we see her losing her way in rural England. The first words Stewart’s Diana utters is, ‘Where the fuck am I?’
She is lost…get it? Heavily suffused in symbolism,this take on what could have gone wrong with Diana’s troubled marriage has little to do with reality. And I don’t mean the state of Diana’s mind, which if we are to believe this film, was highly precarious.
To call Stewart’s Diana highly-strung would be an understatement. Stewart plays Diana with her head tilted to one side , as though trying to balance herself in a world that moves in opposition to her psycho-physical equilibrium. It’s a wonky performance replete with nervous ticks and agonizing silences that scream the lady’s protest against her royal slyness.
The royalty is shown as a collection of stuffed shirts(and gowns). Queen Elizabeth(played by Stella Gonet) is completely lacking in dimension. When the desperately unhappy Diana tries to reach out to her starchy mother-in-law she freezes the poor Diana down by changing the topic.
Worst of all is Prince Charles, played with such aching humanism by Josh O’Connor in the far-superior The Crown. Here Jack Farthing’s Charles stands on the other side of a large room , lips pursed , while Diana stands on one side, her tilted head threatening to create a crick in the neck. They are separated by a billiards table and they speak to each other with gritted teeth.
Spencer(that , for those who came in late , was Diana’s maiden name) is a romp into a theatrical soap opera with all the characters barring Diana appearing to be well-groomed mannequins in a high-end boutique. Timothy Spall as the chief of staff is scarily wizened, as if he walked into this soap-on-cinema thinking it to be a horror film. The very talented Sally Hawkins strikes a note of warmth as Diana’s dresser in this coldhearted take on a woman married into the wrong family.
As for Kirsten Stewart’s Diana, I expected Stewart(a personal favourite) to humanize Diana, to show her as vulnerable yet strong. Stewart plays her a nervous wreck , a candle in the wind on the verge of being extinguished. Stewart’s Diana seems to come alive only when she is with her children. For the rest, she is as unreal as the ghost of Anne Bolyn that haunts Diana.
Yes, there is a ghost too in Spencer. Everything that can possibly go wrong in Diana’s marriage does go wrong. Did Diana deserve to be projected as a woman who is rapidly losing her sense of reality? Does Spencer do anything for Diana except to show us what Kristen Stewart can do with the character when she thinks no one is watching.