SPENCER
****
Director: Pablo Larraín
Screenwriter: Steven Knight
Principal cast:
Kristen Stewart
Timothy Spall
Sean Harris
Sally Hawkins
Jack Farthing
Stella Gonet
Country: Germany/UK
Classification:
Runtime: 116 mins.
Australian release date: 20 January 2022.
In his 2016 film Jackie, the Chilean director Pablo Larraín, covered the aftermath of the death of the US President, John F. Kennedy, in a visualisation of the grief and trauma suffered by a woman who understood the power of communication at a time when few did. In his latest work, Spencer, Larraín and his scriptwriter Steven Knight take us on another journey of torment, this time with Diana, Princess of Wales, in an imagining of events that might have occurred one festive season at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, ten years into the failing marriage between the princess and the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. It depicts the unravelling of a young woman who, while media savvy, was bereft of the skills needed to survive within a rigid, duty-bound family that was ruthless in its lack of human warmth and its absolute adherence to tradition. The screenplay is described as, “A fable from a true story.” Indeed, the director is a master at these kinds of fact-based inventions – he also did it in his “false biopic” of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Larraín describes his new creation this way, “… the Royal family is notoriously discrete. They may appear publicly on some occasions, but at some point, the doors close, and once they are, you don’t know what is happening behind them. That gives a lot to fiction; that was our work. We didn’t aim to make a docudrama, we wanted to create something by taking elements of the real, and then using imagination, to tell the life of a woman with the tools of cinema. That is why cinema is so fantastic: there is always space for imagination.”
In Spencer, Larraín does not hold back. It is Christmas Eve when we see the arrival of a convoy of army trucks carrying trunks loaded with supplies to cater for the Royal appetites. It is greeted by a string of kitchen hands and shows how the Windsor’s life is one of total excess that defies all rationale in the modern world. Nothing is done on a small scale in this world because whenever the family gathers there are fleets of cars, legions of staff, masses of food and scads of handmaids and footmen. Meanwhile, Princess Diana (magnificently portrayed by Kristen Stewart) is lost en route to the house and fronts up at a country café, completely gobsmacking the locals when she asks where she is. Her late arrival to the estate is met by Equerry Major Alistair Gregory (Timothy Spall), who makes no pretence of his disapproval as he tells her that, “They’re waiting for you.” This phrase becomes a kind of mantra in the film, repeated on a number of occasions. The princess, it seems, is always late (wilfully, perhaps?) and this sets the tone for the film: almost everyone is constantly tut-tutting her behaviour, or at least she thinks they are. As history has recorded, Diana not only had to face the rigours of tradition but she was also aware of the affair her husband (Jack Farthing) was having behind her back. This is confirmed in Spencer when the Princess receives a string of outsized pearls for Christmas from Charles and reveals to her dresser, Maggie (Sally Hawkins), that she knows that he bought the same gift for Camilla Parker Bowles (Emma Darwall-Smith).
Claire Mathon’s camera focuses on Stewart in almost every scene. The actress encapsulates Diana’s physicality (she has nailed the princess’s walk and mannerisms, despite being much smaller in stature) and, as her mental state begins to deteriorate, her facial expressions distressingly expose her fragile condition. Her only trusted confidante is Maggie, who is a voice of reason and repeatedly encourages her to rise above the situation, stating that Diana’s beauty is her best weapon against ‘the firm’. In a particularly poignant moment with her sons, William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), Diana extols her love of contemporary pleasures like fast-food and The Phantom of the Opera, both a far cry from more establishment expectations. The Royals, on the other hand, are seen but rarely heard. They are like a bulwark against all things modern, the very things that the princess craves.
Spencer is a thoughtful (some might say overly inventive) film that shows the grandeur but also the dark side of the monarchy. It reveals the almost complete lack of communication between the members of the family, who are steeped in tradition and unable to see any other possible way of being, because this is the way things have always been done - “At 11 o’clock we take sandwiches,” and so on. It takes a maid to share her opinions with the princess, claiming that love is the answer and without that basic emotion all is lost. In just under two hours, Larraín takes you into the close quarters of Diana’s mind and her treatment at the hands of the Windsors and asks, ‘what if?’ How you react to his and Knight’s tale will probably depend on how you felt about the princess and the demise of her marriage to Charles in real life. How ever you react to the film, the power of Stewart’s performance is undeniable and one suspects her name will appear on the Best Actress list come Oscar time.
Screenwriter: Steven Knight
Principal cast:
Kristen Stewart
Timothy Spall
Sean Harris
Sally Hawkins
Jack Farthing
Stella Gonet
Country: Germany/UK
Classification:
Runtime: 116 mins.
Australian release date: 20 January 2022.
In his 2016 film Jackie, the Chilean director Pablo Larraín, covered the aftermath of the death of the US President, John F. Kennedy, in a visualisation of the grief and trauma suffered by a woman who understood the power of communication at a time when few did. In his latest work, Spencer, Larraín and his scriptwriter Steven Knight take us on another journey of torment, this time with Diana, Princess of Wales, in an imagining of events that might have occurred one festive season at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, ten years into the failing marriage between the princess and the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. It depicts the unravelling of a young woman who, while media savvy, was bereft of the skills needed to survive within a rigid, duty-bound family that was ruthless in its lack of human warmth and its absolute adherence to tradition. The screenplay is described as, “A fable from a true story.” Indeed, the director is a master at these kinds of fact-based inventions – he also did it in his “false biopic” of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Larraín describes his new creation this way, “… the Royal family is notoriously discrete. They may appear publicly on some occasions, but at some point, the doors close, and once they are, you don’t know what is happening behind them. That gives a lot to fiction; that was our work. We didn’t aim to make a docudrama, we wanted to create something by taking elements of the real, and then using imagination, to tell the life of a woman with the tools of cinema. That is why cinema is so fantastic: there is always space for imagination.”
In Spencer, Larraín does not hold back. It is Christmas Eve when we see the arrival of a convoy of army trucks carrying trunks loaded with supplies to cater for the Royal appetites. It is greeted by a string of kitchen hands and shows how the Windsor’s life is one of total excess that defies all rationale in the modern world. Nothing is done on a small scale in this world because whenever the family gathers there are fleets of cars, legions of staff, masses of food and scads of handmaids and footmen. Meanwhile, Princess Diana (magnificently portrayed by Kristen Stewart) is lost en route to the house and fronts up at a country café, completely gobsmacking the locals when she asks where she is. Her late arrival to the estate is met by Equerry Major Alistair Gregory (Timothy Spall), who makes no pretence of his disapproval as he tells her that, “They’re waiting for you.” This phrase becomes a kind of mantra in the film, repeated on a number of occasions. The princess, it seems, is always late (wilfully, perhaps?) and this sets the tone for the film: almost everyone is constantly tut-tutting her behaviour, or at least she thinks they are. As history has recorded, Diana not only had to face the rigours of tradition but she was also aware of the affair her husband (Jack Farthing) was having behind her back. This is confirmed in Spencer when the Princess receives a string of outsized pearls for Christmas from Charles and reveals to her dresser, Maggie (Sally Hawkins), that she knows that he bought the same gift for Camilla Parker Bowles (Emma Darwall-Smith).
Claire Mathon’s camera focuses on Stewart in almost every scene. The actress encapsulates Diana’s physicality (she has nailed the princess’s walk and mannerisms, despite being much smaller in stature) and, as her mental state begins to deteriorate, her facial expressions distressingly expose her fragile condition. Her only trusted confidante is Maggie, who is a voice of reason and repeatedly encourages her to rise above the situation, stating that Diana’s beauty is her best weapon against ‘the firm’. In a particularly poignant moment with her sons, William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), Diana extols her love of contemporary pleasures like fast-food and The Phantom of the Opera, both a far cry from more establishment expectations. The Royals, on the other hand, are seen but rarely heard. They are like a bulwark against all things modern, the very things that the princess craves.
Spencer is a thoughtful (some might say overly inventive) film that shows the grandeur but also the dark side of the monarchy. It reveals the almost complete lack of communication between the members of the family, who are steeped in tradition and unable to see any other possible way of being, because this is the way things have always been done - “At 11 o’clock we take sandwiches,” and so on. It takes a maid to share her opinions with the princess, claiming that love is the answer and without that basic emotion all is lost. In just under two hours, Larraín takes you into the close quarters of Diana’s mind and her treatment at the hands of the Windsors and asks, ‘what if?’ How you react to his and Knight’s tale will probably depend on how you felt about the princess and the demise of her marriage to Charles in real life. How ever you react to the film, the power of Stewart’s performance is undeniable and one suspects her name will appear on the Best Actress list come Oscar time.