LFF Review: ‘Spencer’
Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a haunting, mesmerizing and intoxicating masterpiece, firmly anchored by the incredible, larger-than-life performance by Kristen Stewart at its center.
When Kristen Stewart‘s casting as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín‘s Spencer was first announced, it was met with a myriad of mixed responses from fans, critics and general audiences. While fans and critics were generally optimistic and even enthusiastic about the decision to cast the actress as the iconic Diana, general audiences, who may not have seen Stewart’s César Award-winning performance in Clouds of Sils Maria or her stunning, visceral turn in Personal Shopper, were largely apprehensive, even outraged, about the casting, taking to Twitter and other forms of social media to to decry the decision, calling it everything from a “joke” to even a “conspiracy”. It turns out they needn’t have been worried, as Stewart delivers not only one of the best performances of the year, but also of all time, as she all but disappears into the larger than life persona of one of the world’s biggest icons.
Stewart plays Diana across three different days in December 1991, as she experiences her last Christmas with the royals before she and Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) decided to separate. As Diana is subjected to everything from forced weigh ins (as was apparently tradition in the family) to mandatory outfits for every occasion as chosen by the Queen (which she regularly veers away from,) Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight do an exceptional job at demonstrating just how controlled every aspect of Diana’s life as the Princess of Windsor was, all while sensitively and respectfully attempting to capture her frame of mind during the latter years of her marriage to Prince Charles. Even though Spencer is both grotesque and horrifying at times due to its fearless, unconventional exploration of Diana’s psyche, the film never veers into exploitative territory; not only do Larraín, Knight and Stewart understand Diana, but they also respect her and her legacy, which isn’t always the case for biopics. Instead of allowing the audience to gawk at her from behind bars like a caged bird, they instead allow for us to stand right by her as she’s put through the ringer by the family that she married into.
As Diana reminisces over her past life prior to her marriage into the royal family, Larraín cycles through a number of different genres, and he does so expertly, seamlessly transitioning from melodrama to dark comedy to psychological horror to even haunted house movie as Diana sneaks away from the Queen’s Sandringham Estate to pay a visit to her old childhood home. The decision to do so could have made for an incredibly disorienting experience in the hands of any other director but in Larraín’s careful, adept and sensitive hands, it creates for an immersive, intoxicating and mesmerizing experience, not unlike Larraín’s 2016 film, Jackie, which explored the psyche of another world-famous woman, former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, following the fateful shooting of her husband, President John F. Kennedy.
Much like Jackie, Spencer is not your run-of-the-mill biopic; it is fraught, it is messy and it is brutal in its honesty and frankness. And most importantly, it is not interested in rehashing the same stories and reports that we’ve all come to know by heart at this point, instead exploring a different – perhaps fictional – version of the real person behind the film. But unlike that movie, which was mostly cold and purposely inaccessible, Spencer has warmth and heart in spades, mostly thanks to the film’s depiction of Diana’s relationship with her sons, William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), and her friendship with fictional royal dresser Maggie, exceptionally played by Sally Hawkins, who delivers a charismatic performance as Diana’s only true ally in the film.
In fact, the entire cast manage to turn in incredible performances throughout the course of the film but this is undeniably Stewart’s film through and through. She is Spencer. Larraín has previously spoken about feeling like he lucked out by casting Stewart in the role, and he is absolutely right because it’s hard to imagine anyone else turning in the masterclass of a performance that she does throughout the course of the film. As she effortlessly transforms her dialect, mannerisms, physicality and even her appearance into Diana – not an impression or a caricature, but a version of her that perfectly captures her essence without veering into mimicry, she ends up solidifying her status as one of if not the best actress of her generation.
Overall, Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a haunting, mesmerizing and intoxicating masterpiece that is firmly anchored by the incredible, larger-than-life performance by Kristen Stewart at its center, one that has to be seen in order to be believed.
Rating: 5/5
Spencer screened at the 2021 London Film Festival on October 8, 2021. It debuts in theaters on November 5, 2021.