Spencer — Review Thread

I was much too young in the 1990's to really care about who Princess Diana was, so I've always viewed her tragedy at something of a distance. So, maybe it's fitting that for the film Spencer, I would feel much the same way. To give credit where it's due, though, I ultimately do see what this film was going for and I can respect the approach...but it really just comes down to the fact that I found it kind of hard to truly connect with the subject matter and main character here. The film opens by saying that it's a "fable from a true tragedy", and that really is reflected in the film's overall tone. It's clear that Spencer isn't positioning itself as an overly factual or as close-to-reality a narrative as possible (not when it has scenes like Diana eating a pearl necklace that falls into some pea soup or her routinely hallucinating the ghost of Anne Boleyn), and I admit that there was a bit of an adjustment period for me as I had to get onboard with what this movie was doing. But even by then, I still felt a certain disconnect. At first, the film seems to take a stance of being about the woes of first world problems, and maybe that was what was sort of bugging me about it. But as it goes on, it's obvious it's more about depression than a rich woman feeling sorry for herself. I think it's because by the time the film makes it clear what its theme really is, it starts to draw attention to itself a bit too much, to the point where it feels like there's a constant battle going on between the film's story and its tone/style, and it intrudes on how much I could actually get involved in anything. In short, they REALLY lay it on thick, when the movie could've benefitted from more restraint. Is Kristen Stewart any good? I still can't tell, but one thing's for sure: she's committed to it.