Christmas Eve, 1991.  Queen Elizabeth II (Stella Gonet) has arrived at Sandringham Estate to celebrate the holiday.  Notably late to the festivities is Diana, Princess of Whales (Kristen Stewart).  Spencer follows the fated princess during her three-day holiday visit as she endures the pressures of tradition, being in the public eye, and all the expectations and obligations that come with having been married into the royal family. 

Pablo Larraín continues his ethereal examination of tragic political women in his follow-up to Jackie (2016) by hopping across the pond to seek to understand the troubled people’s princess.  Working from a fictionalized script by Steven Knight, Spencer attempts to peel back the layers of Diana to better understand her state of mind, but only ever goes skin deep in its interrogation.  When you couple this with how much outside knowledge the film expects you to bring to the screening, it is hard to say that it achieved what it was going after.  On one hand, if you know a lot about Diana’s story, this film will give you little extra but on the other, if you are unfamiliar with her trajectory the film will not give you much of a better understanding as it is very esoteric about its subject.  Mixing that with the fictional aspect of the film, it becomes a strange piece of not-quite revisionist history, and it certainly does not serve as a functional biopic.   

At the head of the Neon-released film is Stewart who carries the 117-minute narrative with grace, and poise.  She is incredibly sympathetic as everything around her begins to crumble and crash down.  She gives a very tender and reserved performance and is not afraid to show vulnerability in front of the camera.  We often feel that we should not bear witness to the many uncomfortable situations of which she is exposed, but there is enough delicacy in the filmmaking that we do not feel guilty for our voyeurism.  There is an air of mystery that surrounds her, and while Stewart handles the subject matter well, the script really does not give her much to do and her fits are clumsily handled by Knight who writes in shorthand to show her mentally fragile state without much nuance thereby painting Diana in an ungrateful, bratty, unapologetic light. Personally, I cannot attest to the accuracy of her portrayal, but in the few photographs I have seen, she resembles Diana quite well.  Much of this can be attributed to the hair and makeup crews, but the costuming, led here by Jacqueline Durran, is nothing short of incredible.  Stewart looks stunning in every frame of this picture, from her casual and quintessential 90’s outfits to her elegant celebration gowns. 

Next to Stewart, the second most visually captivating aspect of the film is watching the Royal Head Chef, Darren McGrady (Sean Harris) at work in his kitchen.  Much of the passing of time in the film is shown through the preparation of meals.  Larraín treats McGrady as the general of his own small army and the care and dedication that McGrady shows his craft is one of the most enjoyable parts of the entire film.  Late in the film, Diana meets McGrady in the cooks’ quarters and they share a heartfelt conversation.  This intersection of two worlds serves as a nice scene before the tempered lunacy of the third act really begins as it is one of the few times where what is being presented really seems to connect with the rest of what we have seen and is not just another anecdotal sequence full of forlorn language. 

For what the script lacks in structure, Johnny Greenwood makes up for tenfold with his classically and jazz-influenced score.  The music works very well with Larraín’s peering lens as it follows Diana through the winding halls of Sandringham and eventually spiraling into the darker corners of her memory.  The way his score builds in both intensity and complexity as Diana frantically tries to hold herself together under the watchful and critical gaze of the Crown is expertly composed and you can feel the crescendos rattle in your chest like thunder. It fits perfectly into the fabric of Claire Mathon’s photography, who treats many parts of this film as pure, psychological horror and frames it as such which further adds to the film’s technical successes. 

While Spencer makes for a nice tone poem, the pure fictionalized aspect of it is unsettling and makes it hard to enjoy the film.  The implications of having Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) appear in the film as well as the entire arc which Maggie (Sally Hawkins) follows seems almost offensive to the late princesses’ legacy.  In life, she never could quite shake the gaze of the ever-scrutinizing public eye, and with Larraín’s inspired-by feature, we still cannot seem to give her the rest she deserves.  It is a confused work, despite its beautiful and technically stunning composition, that would have benefited from being pursued as an entirely original work of fiction instead of calling itself a fable and being marred down into the moral grey area of creative liberties as it relates to real people, especially ones still so alive in the public consciousness.