On "Spencer" and the Idea of Self

Pablo Larraín’s brilliant new film, Spencer, opens with words on a black screen, reading: “A fable from a true tragedy.” From the start we are introduced to Spencer as a cautionary tale, a twisted magical story about a princess caught in the trap of royalty. In one shot, the bars of Diana’s shower encircle her like a gilded cage as she hugs herself, back to the camera.

Larraín plays with our preconceived notions of Diana by allowing us to drop the critical eye of historical accuracy - by labeling the story a “fable,” he is allowed creative access to blur character lines as we know them and play with our perceptions of these public figures. There is the Diana we know, the people’s princess, beloved, celebrated, vindicated by her legacy. And there is the Diana portrayed: shaky, uncertain, flighty, almost incapacitated by her struggle with bulimia and her mental mixture of resentment and forced duty towards her new family. Yet here she is also strong-willed, fun-loving, compassionate, caring, independent. In Spencer, Diana isn’t shown as she is remembered, but how she might have felt given the situation: scared, unwell, devastated, desperate, but given the space to be complex, to be contradictory.

In one potent scene between Charles (Jack Farthing) and Diana, played ingeniously by Kristen Stewart, Charles tells her that there are two versions of everyone in the family, themselves, and the self that poses for the pictures. In her head, Diana rejects this idea, although she’s seen several times proving just that. Outside the church on Christmas Day, she steps up for the cameras, the black veil of her hat hiding the apprehensive expressions on her face, acting as a barrier between her pose and how she really feels. In another shot, just after the conversation with Charles, she walks along the bank of a river, her body reflected upside down in the water below. There’s Diana, Princess of Wales, a reflection of decades of royal traditions, a woman who beautifully glides across scenic waters, and there’s Diana, walking hurriedly along the banks of a river that belongs to her worst enemies, doing whatever she can to keep away from the mold they’re pressing her into.

Spencer is about Diana, and it’s about her name. Throughout this tumultuous holiday weekend, Diana feels as though she is losing herself in the ridiculous continuation of traditions, dresses, activities, meals. She tells William and Harry that in the Royal Family, there is no future - there is only present and past, and the present has already been decided for them, in part referring to her continued annoyance at the dresses that are thrust at her to be worn at specific points and times of the day. The dresses themselves symbolize the stifling quality of such traditions that are held in high esteem; their frivolousness is baffling to her. Even in the waning of the 20th century, the past still has a stronghold on this family. Secluded in their oversized houses, with armies of wait staff at their beck and call, they dine and hunt and gossip in the midst of history; at one point, Diana insinuates that they’re literally breathing in the skin cells of dead royals who once lived at Sandringham. (A comparison of Diana to Anne Boleyn, brought to life by a biography she reads over the course of the weekend, becomes a chilling motif throughout the film.) While the idea of royal traditions of the past as her smothering present are terrifying for Diana, she wishes to run back to her own past as a Spencer. The estate is just across the hill from her childhood home, in fact, and in a beautifully done third act scene, instead of joining her family for dinner, she stalks over the hill in rubber boots and a ball gown, determined to seek what she feels is slipping through her fingers. As she steps through her now dilapidated house, floors creaking, she allows herself to reminisce: we see Diana playing on the hill as a child, running free through the grounds as a teenager, dancing in the halls as a young adult. Before she doubted herself, before she felt crushed by the weight of history itself, she was here: free, open-hearted, light on her feet. Through the screen we can feel Diana’s desperation to return to that state of childlike warmth, to physically run away from the confines of her current duties, to shed the titles and the tiaras and to become her old self again.

At the end of the film, Diana escapes the hellish weekend early with William and Harry riding along, singing loudly to “All I Need is a Miracle” as they speed through the English countryside. Upon arriving in London, Diana drives through a KFC, a reference to an earlier moment where she tells her dresser Maggie (Sally Hawkins) that she likes lots of “middle-class” things, such as fast food. She orders for the three of them, wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses, and when the employee asks for her name, she pauses, then replies decisively, “Spencer.”