Much of the public still feels Princess Diana belongs to them. Especially since her youngest son, Prince Harry, and his wife, Duchess Meghan Markle, retired from the royal family, scrutiny has turned back to the more painful aspects of Di’s life: Her terrible marriage, struggles with self-harm, and eventual tragic death. On the Netflix series The Crown and in countless other iterations, she’s depicted as The People’s Princess through and through—not only a symbol of kindness and charity, but a cautionary tale about tradition and nation.
But Spencer director Pablo Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises), who have created what they call a “fable” out of the period just before her marriage officially ended, say resoundingly that she’s not ours. No: Diana Spencer, no longer a princess when she left her adulterous husband and the obligations he came with, belonged to herself.
Spencer, as other early reviews have said in so many ways, is an odd film. That’s not a surprise for Larraín, who loves to buck tradition both ideologically and formally. His last film, Ema, blew up the nuclear family with a wild, reggaeton-inflected plot. Now he takes his risky methods to a more controversial kinship—The Family, as it were. Stylistic comparisons with Larraín’s Oscar-nominated Jackie are apt; in this movie too, there are seemingly endless manicured grounds and a flush, thin woman trekking through them terrified. But what Larraín and Knight bring to Diana’s story is a daringness to imagine the woman not only outside of her public context, but her media-constructed one.
Kristen Stewart plays the troubled princess as both clever and paranoid. The woman is crazy, right? Driving herself to meet the family without her detail; finding her late father’s coat and talking to it; requesting Maggie (Sally Hawkins), her favorite royal dresser, as a kind of personal companion; seeing the ghost of Anne Boleyn after her biography is left on her bed; making herself throw up after dinner.
By now we know that such marks of madness are common, expected even in a turbulent world where women’s lives are held up as symbols and not, well, lives. Stewart was reportedly the third choice to play Diana, and the first American one. Yet she’s just right for the part. She embodies the nervous intelligence Larraín starkly emphasizes, giving a performance that’s as true to herself as it is to the character she plays—which is why Stewart is so good and so polarizing as an actor.
And that polarization is fitting. Diana’s fragility is a grave weakness in the eyes of the House of Windsor; it literally brings her to her knees. But outside of that world, the film argues, maybe that sensitivity has better use. We see the indulgent trivialities of the portrait the Royal Family holds up for the public: the trunks of gourmet food delivered by troops; the many minders, handlers, and servants who make sure things are just so; the gowns, the gossip, the hunting, the self-seriousness. In one scene, Prince Charles (Jack Farthing, who also plays an unsympathetic husband in another film on the current festival circuit, The Lost Daughter) tells Diana that the Family must hold up an image for the public—that’s their duty. She’s not convinced, and neither are her sons, who look to her for fun and spontaneity.
The ridiculousness of Spencer—its free jazz soundtrack, Johnny Greenwood’s tinkly and melodramatic score, the emotionally pregnant montages and flashbacks to childhood, apparitions in the corridor— is what makes it compelling to watch; the fact that it’s already divided critics is a sign of its strength. Of course, those surrounding Diana at the time must have thought her ridiculous, as no doubt many in Britain now believe Markle to be. And anybody breaking out of a fortress built for her supposed protection is always engaging in a “hysterical” act. You have to kick and scream to insist that things are not right as they are, no matter how reasonable the people in charge my sound.
In that way, Diana does come back to us. By allowing its title character to express a fierce interiority, no matter how fancifully imagined, Spencer preaches refusal at the highest ranks. That’s an act the people should be able to get behind.
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