“There’s no doubt Diana, Princess of Wales went through some tough times as she navigated her initiation into royal life and later her crumbling marital relationship.
“But is this really how we should remember a woman who, after all, campaigned for causes close to her heart, brought joy to the people she met and established herself as a style icon like no other? Doesn’t she deserve to be portrayed as far more than someone who was too scared to go down to dinner with the in-laws?” — from a 10.24 Telegraph piece by Bethan Holt, titled “Diana’s inner circle on Spencer: ‘She’d be horrified at the way she’s portrayed now'”
Kristen Stewart‘s Diana isn’t just skittish about having dinner with the in-laws. She’s behaves like a kind of royal madwoman, disturbed and beset by visions of Anne Boleyn and whatnot…almost on the level of Julie Harris‘s “Eleanor” in the last third of The Haunting…a kind of sketchy cuckoo bird in a surreal mindscape movie…a kind of nightmarish Stepford Wives (or wife) in the country.
Filed on 9.4.21: I’ve said before that Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer (Neon/Topic, 11.5) is agony to sit through. It’s a simplistic, impressionistic head–trip film…a “poor free-spirited, pheasant-sympathizing, pearl necklace-loathing Diana vs. the cold, bloodless gargoyle royals” bullshit borefest.
It has a half-decent singalong ending (“All I Need Is A Miracle”) but otherwise pretty much stays in the same place start to finish.
Call it Diary of a Mad, Super-Privileged Princess on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Not, alas, directed by Pedro Almodovar but Pablo Larrain.
Stewart will be Best Actress-nominated, I’m presuming. The movie is appalling but she’s very good at what she’s been asked to do — let’s leave it at that. Her Diana speaking voice is breathy and whispery and hard to understand, but that’s okay. We enjoy being kept in the dark about certain things.
Spencer follows the wokester narrative that white elitism is evil and rancid and needs to be resisted at all costs. Because Diana needs to breathe, love, live, talk to pheasants and save her sons from those toxic royal traditions and soul-smothering attitudes.
Time and again and through Diana’s eyes, we see the royal family as icy monsters. I was actually thinking back to The Ruling Class (’72) and Peter O’Toole’s “Mad Jack” impressions of the House of Lords being filled with decaying corpses.
Jordan Ruimy: “Diana is portrayed as a total lunatic. She feels stuck and victimized, but is part of the most white-privileged of circumstances. You have no sympathy for her whatsoever. You just wish she could go see a therapist or get proper medication.”