Princess Diana was an icon in her life, and remained so even in her death. The amazing thing is not only the amount of works made about her about half a century after she perished in an accident, but also how different they are from each other: “Diana” was a musical; The “crown” is the “crown”; “The Princess,” a fresh documentary about her character, consists solely of archival footage starring her; And “Spencer,” a feature film coming to us this weekend, is something completely different.
The film made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last summer. Indeed, it turns out to be a classic festival film – artistic, stylish and challenging. “The Crown,” in short, it is not, nor is any other routine biographical period drama. So what is it?
If I had to delimit “Spencer” within the confines of one genre, I would define it as a kind of horror film, not scary but definitely dark, featuring a folk tale about a kind-hearted princess and an evil queen. This tale is made up of two parts – imprisonment and redemption. Both take place in one of the estates of the British royal family, as it spends the Christmas of 1991, when the marriage of Diana and Charles has already completely disintegrated, and the tension between her and his family has reached its peak.
The first part describes how Diana suffers from this golden cage. Queen Elizabeth II conveys a variety of different and strange rituals. Among other things, she forces her to stand on the weight to check if she has gained a few grams, and further intensifies her eating disorders. Charles, whose affair with Camila Parker Bulls was already known at the time, humiliates her in his way. The claustrophobic atmosphere presses on her, and ghosts of previous royal women who suffered before her haunt her. The choke ring tightens around her neck, and the only ones who show compassion towards her and allow her to cling to life are the servants, the only ones in the environment with a hint of humanity.
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The second part describes how the princess manages to free herself from the evil queen and the evil prince, regain her freedom and escape the cruel fate that awaited her – at least temporarily. Together, the pieces make up what is to me the best film of the past year. It was a pulsating cinematic year, and “Spencer” is the crown jewel.
The brilliant script was written by the veteran Stephen Knight, who signed, among other things, the series “The Birmingham Gang”, and who carried it out is the Chilean director Pablo Larin. “Spencer” is the second episode in a trilogy of films by him, which deal with tragic cultural heroines. The previous episode, “Jackie,” dealt with Jackie Kennedy, and there were already those who asked the filmmaker if he would dedicate the third episode to Britney Spears, but apparently he would go in a different direction.
Like “Jackie”, “Spencer” also boasts an impressive production design, costumes full of style and spectacular aesthetics in general, but of course that’s not enough. After all, “Jackie”, despite all these virtues, was a problematic film. So what allows the second episode of the trilogy to surpass it? First of all, his script is coherent, witty and much brighter, and manages to justify engaging in the worn-out icon, and there are two other reasons.
The first reason is Kristen Stewart, who plays Diana, and in a normal world she was one and only Oscar favorite. Many actresses, for example Natalie Portman in “Jackie”, were content with a paper-rich imitation of the icon they play. She, on the other hand, does not at all try to emulate the character, but simply recreates it and does so in a mesmerizing and inspiring way.
But with all due respect to the great Stuart, the real star of the film is a different craftsman: the French photographer Claire is moderate, one of the most talented photographers working today.
On the one hand, Moderate does a good job of bringing the camera closer to the princess, creating a rare intimacy with her and allowing us to feel everything she goes through; On the other hand, it is also astonishing to broaden the perspective, and to turn Spencer into an abstract and powerful tale that deals with much larger and more universal issues – motherhood, femininity and independence, for example. Thanks to the way she photographs Diana and everything around her, we get to understand the weight on her shoulders.
To all these must be added the works of the supporting actors and actresses, some of the best on the British Isles, for example Sally Hawkins; The music of Johnny Greenwood, who did an exemplary job this year also in “The Power of the Dog”; And the fact that throughout its 90 minutes, the film gets better and better and progresses to a wonderfully exciting ending.
This suffix also allows us to understand why Larin, unlike other creators who have dealt with the subject in recent years, did not call the film “Diana” or “The Princess” but simply “Spencer”, as his protagonist’s original last name, before marrying the royal family.
On the face of it, it seems at first that the film is complicit in turning his protagonist into a mythologist, but then it turns out that he is striving to do the opposite. Diana eludes him during the golden cage in which they tried to lock her up, and also from the persona they tried to force on her. She is released and set free – away from the royal house and away from the kind of storm, to a place where there will be no icon, but a mortal; A place where there will not be “Princess Diana”, but simply Spencer.
Biographical films about characters who are no longer, usually end in death, but this film is only interested in the life of Diana Spencer. He allows her, at the last moment of grace, to live them, discover herself and understand who she is. When you watch her do that, we also understand something – where did Prince Harry get his fine gardens from.
Avner Shavit is the film critic of Walla!