What’s Good: Pablo and Steven Knight get into Princess Diana’s head as she lives the caged life. Kristen Stewart takes the characters and breaks free like a wildfire.
What’s Bad: That it will get only limited screens in India. Grab your chance and enter that cinema hall if you are fortunate to get a show.
Loo Break: The camera is on Stewart 90 percent of the runtime, you will keep avoiding the nature’s call until it’s too urgent.
Watch or Not?: If you miss this one, you will probably never know the range Kristen has and the prolific filmmaking Pablo does.
Spencer is 3 days into Princess Diana’s life during the Christmas eve of 1991 at the Sandringham Estate in London, when she battled inner demons, struggled with deteriorating mental health and finally decided to end her marriage to Prince Charles!
'The Royals’, a life of symmetry and the existence that demands the world to bow. Director Pablo Larraín describes Spencer as ‘a fable from a true tragedy’, A FABLE, so let’s consume it like that. We all are aware of the fact that Princess Diana was always the black sheep in the Royal family and that she did rebel against the monotony and caged existence she was put into. Emma Corrin in Netflix’s hit series The Crown has immaculately explained that.
Writer Steven Knight in my observation does understand the existence of that performance and writes Spencer in a deeper and personal way. It is almost him telling us that you already know who these Royals are, you know what they did to Diana, what you don’t are her personal battles and we are here to show you just that. We are looking at this world through the lens the Princess Of Wales saw it with, especially in those three days of Christmas eve.
This gives the writers the room to have the complete focus on Diana and her mind that is functioning at full speed. Her husband (Prince Charles) is in an extramarital affair (with Camilla Parker Bowles never named), she is being slowly wiped out of his life, her children are brought up contradictory to how she wants. So it is just her who is in the frame. So even Queen Elizabeth becomes a character in the background. Only Charles gets a bit more limelight, because he is the immediate partner. Sally Hawkins’ Maggie is a character that grows eventually and beautifully.
Princess Diana is Bulimic, so when the food comes to the kitchen through an army carrier, it feels like a weapon consignment. It’s her head that is playing with her. She is almost prisoned in a beautiful yet spooky palace, she walks through empty corridors but still has eyes on her. She is told what to wear, when to eat and when to not be where she wants to. The psychological pressure and worsening due to captivity is what the script explores.
While the dresses she is going to wear are tagged POW (Princes Of Wales or Prisoners Of War?), the curtains in her room are stitched from the centre as if she might fly free and never return. When she expressed her wish to see her childhood home, she is stopped by the police. She is finding a home and all that the Royal culture puts her in is a beautiful prison laced with golden chains. The writing gets into the very essence of who the Princess was how keen she was to find herself, her identity.
While it focuses on how much she loved being free and wild, it also reminds you of the aching motherhood in her that wants her boys to taste freedom breaking their robotic existence.
You must be logged in to post a comment.