From one Best Actor prediction to another – if not for Kristen Stewart, I probably would have passed this movie by. The Royals are not an institution to which I give much thought, and this movie could prove an eat-your-vegetables type experience for me, preparing for awards season. The mysticism behind Princess Diana, and the speculation surrounding her death, has also been done to death. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in Australia, I’d say we average an exclusive television special on Princess Diana every year! Not that I ever watch them. But I took my Nan to see Naomi Watt’s Diana back in 2013 (dull), and I’m going to see how they compare.
Spencer shoves Die Hard in the side; there’s a new Christmas movie at the party… pal! Taking place over the span of Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, Spencer follows Diana’s grumbles as she’s expected to spend the holidays at Sandringham Estate, with her extended family. I get it, Diana, these family events aren’t always such a joyous occasion as advertised, but for the Princess of Wales it involves deeply entrenched immovable traditions, that are just an example of the same day-to-day structures that stifle Diana’s freedom and spontaneity. From a Steven Knight script, Spencer is clearly using the Royals as a framework to tell a fictitious story about oppressive rule in a stern pecking order; whilst Diana’s life is fleshed out, this cannot be considered a straight biopic. Pablo Larrain directs.
There are a couple small pointers you need to know before this movie can begin… our lead character is going to die, and there’s durable speculation that the Royals were behind it. Spencer wastes no time framing a position, emotionally labelling itself a ‘fable of a true tragedy’ and displaying the Royals at a distance, with a deeply regimented kitchen equipped with signs that state something like, ‘Keep the noise to a minimum. They are listening.’ Well, who’s ‘they’? The others! Just like we are on Lost, and at season’s end, the Others will take away your boy/s (quite a suitable comparison, really). I’ve seen personal stories told using the Royals before (Victoria & Abdul), but I’ve never seen the Royals so human before – especially Diana, carrying herself by swearing, stressing, and manifesting into mental illness, like her purging, as if her body is rejecting the food in internal protest against those silly weighing scales. This is a terrifically poetic script, full of lavish language for the characters to explain themselves. I’ve also never considered a comparison between Anne Boleyn and the predicament of Princess Diana before – that was eye-opening, and a point carried throughout the movie. Because if the Royals did bump Diana off, they couldn’t have done it with a guillotine like the old days, and there’s evidence in the accusation that the Royals have killed difficult women before. The movie urges us to think of our current Royals in terms of centuries to make that argument.
Spencer’s use of cinematic language is either simple or precise, but I thoroughly enjoyed it’s wide use – the pheasants, representing a dumb beauty that the Royals care none about; it is useless to them, in the face of decadence, and where Diana maintains, if it were seen in lower communities, the beauty would be enough to keep them revered. The coat, as the familiar past, the curtains as a cage of necessity, and the horse statues in the glass cabinets, tamed by design, are all symbology and I was picking up what the movie was putting down. My favourite scene has to be with the snooker table; how it opposes Charles and Diana together, with the pink ball out in front of Charles, which I took to mean the Queen, with the unified red balls behind it, and with Charles’ words and fingers trapping around the black ball until it is pushed off the table – what a brilliant artistic choice to highlight your story. And the pearls of course, acting like a rich tag of compliance and taking a few dramatic turns, with the first becoming almost a catalyst for Swallow. A few other movie moments came to mind, emulated by Spencer, but it’s all actually a lot like Things Heard and Seen if you think about it; Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) the warning spirit, while the ones closest get more smothering by the minute.
From an acting point of view, sometimes you hear a pairing, and it just makes sense. Diana and Kristen Stewart share an angled chin, and flickering eyes that make for an aloof sexuality. I went in and out of losing Stewart in this performance, where her strongest power is in a gaze or a movement, more than mastering an effortless breathy English accent. She will get nominated for the top awards, of course, signed away by impromptu dance numbers nearing the end, because that’s what you do, taking a leaf out of Joaquin Phoenix’s book with Joker.
I was really taken aback by the supporting cast too. A relatively forgotten and unsung hero of The Shape of Water is Sally Hawkins, and she takes charge again, as Diana’s dresser, who portrays the most passion for Diana’s freedom. She’s remarkable, and so is Sean Harris; pretty much unknown to me outside of the villain in the Mission Impossible movies, it was exciting to discover a gentler side to him as an actor. As a redhead, is Harris’ Head Chef supposed to be the one tied to conspiracies of Harry’s true father? I’ll have to look it up. The movie is already doing too much to suggest anything either way, but he is kind, and their relationship seems deep. And Timothy Spall; hasn’t he lost weight?! (I ask, with the gossipy surprise of a stereotypical nail salon stylist). Spall’s character, Equerry Major Alistair Gregory, sulks around the castle, watching like a rat – and with a renowned capability of actually being a rat in the Harry Potter series, he basically casts himself. Jack Farthing and Stella Gonet play the Royals, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II respectively, and whilst they don’t have that much dialogue, the movie doesn’t waste their appearances. Young Jack Nielan and Freddie Spry, as William and Harry, are also very capable.
And getting to the movie’s end, it’s like ‘fuck me!’, the movie has convinced me, and it is a true tragedy that this Diana never found her freedom. The ending wants to be a lot at once, letting loose a calculated movie up until that point. But thinking on it now, it’s probably exactly fitting, as Princess Di is wriggling free of her responsibility, to have a sing-along and a chicken leg with her boys, if only for a day. (How well does the song, ‘All I Need is a Miracle’ by Mike & the Mechanics, fit into this movie too?! The first and only burst of a pop song for the entire soundtrack, and who would’ve thought that’s where we were heading?) To my astonishment, I am thoroughly impressed by this movie – I went in expecting something slow and heavy, and come out with a strong recommendation. You can feel the suffocation around Diana, emulating from the screen for the entire production, and I’ve been thinking long and hard on that only real scene where Diana and the Queen interact, and wondering how much it suggests that the Queen might really be alright; and the problems perceived were all in Diana’s head. Even still, I doubt my Nan would have liked this movie; people who have revered the Royals for so many years will probably hate this movie, showing off the potential ugliness within their revelry. But the new generation, verse is shaking up and dismantling stuffy traditions, will understand what Spencer is communicating, and I’d suggest Megan Markle is comparing notes. Ultimately, I want to live life the way this Diana would approve.
4.5
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