A beautiful pair of spectacles is usually enough to make me fall for a film—this one has two, though I doubt it will endure the passage of time as have the iconic frames whose stories it tells. If it will continue to be seen, it will likely be within the shadow of the oeuvre of one of the brightest directors of our time—an in-between title.
Yet, I don’t think that Pablo Larraín’s metaphysical tragedy is quite as bad as Mark Kermode described it in his scathing review1. While the script often feels contrived and affected, the aphoristic wit of its dialogues comes across more as a deliberate if questionable mannerism than a vain artifice—a literary gravity that somehow evokes Paolo Sorrentino’s criticised lyricism, whose influence on the Chilean director might perhaps extend beyond the writing.
Although Angelina Jolie’s rigorous preparation to sync with Maria Callas’s voice led to hardly believable results, her portrayal conveys a sense of aristocratic stoicism that I personally enjoyed. Rather than her performance, the real issue may lie in the casting—as it does for the entire leading ensemble.
What remains a moment of personal fascination in any of Larraín’s films, is his raw and instinctive directing method, apparent even in less convincing projects like this might ultimately be—no readings or rehearsals, no storyboards or shot lists, just a few takes per shot, and utter creative freedom on set. All this relying, of course, on the irreplaceable collaboration with a cinematographer of Ed Lachman’s uncommon stature.
In conclusion, flares of cinematic and thespian beauty do arise throughout the film, but, partly sharing Kermode’s disappointment, without giving the same exaltation and intoxication the stage used to give to Maria Callas (‘Sometimes I thought the stage itself would burn,’ makes her continue Steven Knight)—a feeling I kept on longing for, until the end credits ungracefully dashed my hopes.
It is hard a life, surrounded
by people who constantly
worry about you when
everything you need, is—
something
silence
help.
O death, rock me asleep,
Bring me the quiet rest.
Let pass my weary guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
Spencer is not as irreverent as it might appear, or at least not in the way it seems. If there’s anything it encourages to reflect on it isn’t much the unsympathetic gazes of the Royals, as the hypocrisy of a culture that allows people to live in captivity, only pretending to really question itself. However golden the bars, they are nonetheless those of a cage.
Even if Kristen Stewart’s performance alternates some excellent moments, especially non-verbal, with less convincing ones where the acting almost looks blurred by the effort of finding the absolute right mannerisms, and even though the slightly uncomfortable unrealistic and verbose eloquence that shapes many of the dialogues in the draft I read have survived here and there throughout the shot script (like a convoluted metaphorical dissertation on the tenses or a monologue where she improvises as a pheasant lifestyle guru)1, there is very little to go around. Spencer is a magnificent film.
Pablo Larraín’s take on a material that could have easily led to tatty results; the supporting actors’ blazing display of bravura (I would watch any film that has Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins or Tim Spall in it); Claire Mathon’s photography, whose sensibility had already enchanted me in such wonders as Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Stranger by the Lake; and above all the phenomenal music composed by Jonny Greenwood. Everything works as a whole and seduces even those like me who didn’t think they needed the umpteenth speculation on poor Princess Diana. The beauty of Spencer is just as toxic as art can be.
1. To be anal, and for my own record, I also wonder if such lines as, ‘It doesn’t fit with my mood, it should be black, black to contrast the pearls,’ (referring to a sea-green satin dress she is supposed to wear to Christmas Eve dinner that incidentally will end up matching the color of the pea soup served that evening) or, ‘They dream but they are able to wake up, I am not allowed to wake up,’ (punctuating what Maggie just said, that people dream of being her) or again Diana’s sarcastic reply to a maid offering help, ‘How can you help me? No one is here to help me,’ could have dropped the redundant elaboration of the concept in second half to a more natural and even more effective result. But again, I genuinely just wonder. Other lines, like Diana’s first meaningful utterance as she drives in the middle of the British nowhere, ‘Where the fuck am I?’ or when she replies, ‘Oh yes, terribly,’ to William asking if she likes them getting mad at her, or later on when she wittily remarks, ‘All set, as if everything has already happened,’ are brilliant.
