Movie Review: Spencer

 I haven’t been here in a while. Life. People dying. Enough said.

I went to the movies last week and saw Spencer, which isn’t quite a dramatization or a biography or whatever you may call it. If you know even the smallest tidbit about Diana, Princess of Wales, then you will find yourself stretched between trying to match her history and this “fable,” which is what I believe the director called it.  Unfortunately, he choose to include enough about Diana’s history that fit in with his narrative and jettison huge hunks of that which don’t, and we have a jumble of fact and fantasy, and therefore it doesn’t hold together as either fact OR fantasy.

The acting is superb, which makes it even more maddening. Stewart pulls it off, regardless of the disconnect. She does exactly what the director intends, which means that she has down pat many of Diana’s mannerisms, which also means that we are, again, leaping back and forth between the “real” Diana and the Diana of the fable. 

Aside from the acting (the entire ensemble is great, no gripes there), there is the issue of HOW this victim of both fantasy and/or fact is betrayed. I didn’t come away feeling sorry for her at all. I thought, wow, you are petulant, petty, whiny, and a royal pain in the ass. We are meant to feel pity for this character. We are meant to believe she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and all these meanie royals just don’t care. Pout pout pout. As my sister said, Gee, she’s in tears 75% of the movie. We are meant to believe that a history of Anne Boleyn is going to push her into some sort of psychosis, and it’s not even a subtle hint that the royal family will, five years later, orchestrate her demise, akin to Henry murdering Anne because he wanted a son to carry on his line. Historically speaking, had Anne Boleyn had sons, Henry never would have had her executed. 

It takes the ghostly specter of Anne Boleyn to prompt Diana to have her “Come to Jesus” moment where she tugs on the pearls (a symbol of her husband’s affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles) and lets them cascade onto the floor. Of course, she could have told Charles when she opened the pearls that she had no intention of wearing them. And this is what is missing. Diana has no anger. 

Why didn’t she tell that factotum that she refuses to be weighed because it’s silly and demeaning, and then just walk away? She’s a goddamn princess and he’s a secretary! And the fact is that most of us have traditions around the holidays. I do. How hard would it be to show up on time for dinner? The director makes this seems like the most unholy of demands when you have to show up for dinner on time at my house. 

It’s difficult to believe that this character is a woman of thirty-one. She acts like she’s sixteen. She is cowed by everyone. She gets advice from the head chef (oh, please, why did you go there? AS IF) and her maid confesses her love for Diana (AS IF SQUARED), and these two actions plus the ghost (can’t forget the frigging ghost), prompt her to finally find her spine. 

I truly hate this word, hate, hate, hate it, but this woman has NO agency. Instead of appearing late for dinner in some outfit selected for her, what if she appeared on time in jeans and a tee-shirt. And let’s make it even more interesting: no bra. Instead of mooning around the grounds in the dead of winter trying to gain entrance to her old house, why not start talking through dinner about land mines and AIDS patients. THESE were the causes that made Diana so brave. It wasn’t that she turned her back on royalty that made her such an interesting woman; it’s that she humanized it. This movie gets it all wrong. WRONG! Driving away in a Porsche, singing to a CD at the top of her lungs, and thinking this is freedom, only confirms in the British Royal Family’s eyes and mine, that she’s a superficial airhead.

Finally, near the end of this movie, there is a dance montage with her in a series of her iconic outfits, which not only emphasizes that she was nothing more than a mannequin for the British Royal Family, but also for the director.