Directed by Pablo Larraín
Written by Steven Knight
Starring Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sean Harris, and Jack Farthing
Running time 1 hour 57 minutes
Now playing in theaters 

by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

On August 31, 1997, my parents whisked me off to college in two cars, my mom driving me in one, my dad following behind in another. We sped up north on Route 13 in Delaware, a dual highway with two lanes going both north and south, past miles of empty fields on either side. About an hour into our drive, we noticed my dad move into the passing lane and pull up quickly beside us on the left. He rolled down his windows, and when my mom did the same he called out, “Princess Diana died.” 

I wouldn’t say I grew up in a royals-obsessed household, but my dad was a big Princess Di “fan” - or whatever you would call it. My grandmother on my mom’s side was also enamored of her - collecting any and all People Magazine special on her as they were released. I mostly grew up fascinated by William and Harry, imagining the wonderful toys and traveling and cool things they probably got to do. But by the time Diana died, I knew that things couldn’t be as amazing as I pictured when I was younger. Needless to say, this news hit us all a bit hard that day. 

Many have speculated on the inner workings of the royal family for decades, in the press, in private, through art. How many movies or tv shows have you seen depicting the British monarchy? For me, there are too many to count. It feels like in most of them–from The Crown to The Queen to The Young Victoria to The King’s Speech to A Royal Night Out–there’s a sense of curiosity at the blessed, chosen family, and almost always an underlying reverence. 

This is why Pablo Larraín’s haunting Spencer is such a pulse-quickening experience. Larraín and writer Steven Knight dare to portray the British royal family as anything but the benevolent, charitable cultural icons typically depicted in countless other films and shows. Instead, we see the royal line as a threatening, malignant force. It’s an inspired choice that feels both arresting and suffocating, especially given the spotlight on the family post-Harry and Meghan’s departure. Their flight has allowed a peek behind the curtain of what we could call the oldest-known cult in modern humanity. While I will never understand what it’s like to be caught in such a trap, I have seen first-hand how cults can inflict trauma, even long after escape. What I love most about Spencer is its insistence on showing the British monarchy in a less exalted light.  

A title card at the beginning of Spencer warns that this is “a fable based on a true tragedy.” In fact, this is not your average, take-your-older-relatives-to-a-matinee biopic. While loosely based on historical events, the film is not constructed with the normal pomp and circumstance of the standard biographical film. You’ll find none of the typical biopic splendor here–scenes of the subject’s mythological childhood, a meet-cute with Prince Charles, happier times before darkness, triumphant conclusion.

Spencer imagines a royal family Christmas, perhaps towards the end of Charles and Diana’s marriage, in which her experience veers on psychological terror. Forced to spend three itinerary-packed days at Sandringham, It’s an interesting concept. The film opens on Diana (Kristen Stewart) driving herself to the estate, sans security detail (scoff!). Her days are planned to the minute; her outfits already packed, shipped, unpacked, pressed, and tagged. And yes, even her clothing for private family gatherings, like Boxing Day Breakfast and Unwrapping Gifts on Christmas Eve are selected for her. When she arrives (late, scoff!) she’s forced to weigh herself by Major Alistar Gregory (a creeptastic Timothy Spall), the Queen’s new secret weapon for (hopefully) keeping Diana in line. You see, all of the family members must weigh themselves on day one of holiday festivities, just like they did some hundreds of years ago or whatever, and gain three stone while there to prove they enjoyed themselves!  When Diana protests, the Major persists, and Diana is reminded that this curious tradition is all just a bit of fun. (This does not, in fact, sound like any kind of fun). 

And so sets off the feverishness of the next few days as Diana is poked and prodded by the family and all but stalked by the household staff, the Major and his men, the police on-site, and the press hovering in every corner. As Diana’s ability to control her own life dissipates, she descends into a whirlwind of binge eating, bulimia, paranoia, and anxiety. Her only comforts are her young boys (well-played by Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry) and dresser Maggie (the always amazing Sally Hawkins). The scenes with Stewart, Nielen, and Spry are a fascinating character study, considering what we know of William and Harry’s public personas. William tries to keep his mum in line as a peacekeeper, while Harry is depicted as a lovable rascal with an independent streak. It’s these moments when Kristen Stewart’s performance feels most alive, when she just about melts into the role and we can forget for a moment the actor behind the portrayal. That’s not to say Stewart isn’t good in this - she gives her mad Diana a melancholy forcefulness that feels exactly right. But there were many times when I found myself taken out of a moment by the accent or her delivery or a combination of the two. There’s nothing wrong with any of it necessarily, it’s just distracting at times, much like Natalie Portman’s breathy, overly enunciated Jackie Kennedy impersonation in Larraín’s Jackie. In watching both Spencer and Jackie, I found myself noticing the accent and mannerisms so much because they’re so prominently accentuated when perhaps the audience doesn’t always need them to be. 

While Jackie tackled the week after JFK’s assassination in a non-linear, albeit more traditional biopic fashion, Spencer is anything but conventional. Steven Knight’s script revels in keeping the audience on its toes, chewing us up and spitting us out as we endure three painful, bizarre days with the royal family. Actually, we don’t even spend that much time with the family at all, and most of them aren’t even given an opportunity to speak. The film doesn’t find Diana confronted by the whole family until at least 30 or 40 minutes in at Christmas Eve dinner, a trippy, disorienting scene devoid of any real dialogue. If you’re watching the film for historical accuracy, you’ve come to the wrong place - while the shading feels real, Diana, as written, feels more difficult than the history books might tell us. Near the film’s end, past and present Diana consort with the ghost of Anne Boleyn, whose countenance provides a running motif within the script, in a minutes-long montage of sorts that is the closest thing we get to the Official Biopic Flashback. Overall, it’s a highly engaging and fascinating script - whether one likes it or not, you can’t call it unoriginal. 

Equally original is Jonny Greenwood’s disconcerting score that couples traditional orchestral arrangements with the moody frenzy of jazz - old and new styles that one might think shouldn’t go together, but instead cooperate so well. Also arresting is Claire Mathon’s beautifully dreary cinematography. Given her work on Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Atlantics, and Petite Maman, this is not surprising. 

There’s a scene near the very end where Diana extricates Harry and William from a traditional hunting expedition. When Diana arrives and insists the children leave with her, dutiful William waits for his father’s verbal consent while Harry casts a side-long look at his grandmother the Queen before hopping off-screen. It’s such a simple, impactful way of illustrating the differences between how their lives will play out later and my very favorite part of the film. As Diana, William, and Harry “escape” in her Porsche back to the safety of London and each other’s closeness, it’s the hardest scene to watch. At first lovely to see the trio so happily together, you start to remember what happened in real life. This is not a biopic. This is not a story of freedom or winners and losers. No one wins. None of the family members in question–Diana, William, Harry, Charles, the Queen–none truly escape. Even though some have tried, Harry (in the real world), along with his wife and children, will forever be tied to the British royal family and the prying, scornful eyes of the world at large. Diana’s story is indeed a true tragedy, as the film tells us at the beginning, but the horror lives on so long as the family insists on preserving its “tradition.”