The psychodramatic Spencer miscasts Kristen Stewart as a frazzled Princess Diana
Jackie director Pablo Larraín fails to make compelling Diana’s struggles with royalty
Film Reviews Spencer
Sandringham Estate was once called “the most comfortable home in England.” Never mind that it was working toilets that earned the decadent Norfolk manor, where the royal family has spent the Christmas holiday for decades now, such a reputation; as modern plumbing became less of a luxury and more of a standard, the description stuck. But so, too, have rumors that the place is haunted. It’s those that echo through the halls of the estate in Spencer, Pablo Larraín’s handsome, mannered new psychodrama about the crumbling marriage of Princess Diana. Viewed, early on, from a downright Kubrickian overhead vantage, to emphasize the staunch rigidity of its architecture and routines, the mighty house has all the cozy charm of The Overlook. No one seems comfortable here. Not even the guests of honor.
Among them, of course, is Diana (Kristen Stewart), present by national obligation, sons in tow. For her, the estate is a gilded cage. She has been instructed to keep the blinds closed, ostensibly to shield the country’s most famous family from the snapping cameras of the paparazzi—which is to say, from the vultures many would later deem responsible for her death. But their eyes pry no more fiercely than those of Major Alistar Gregory (Timothy Spall), the ex-military man whose responsibility to keep the press at bay extends to constant, vigilant surveillance of the Princess Of Wales. And then there are the in-laws, peering with silent, stony judgment over their meals. They might as well be actual apparitions, for all they’re humanized here.
Spencer is set almost entirely on the grounds of Sandringham, and over just three days, from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, most likely circa 1991. No huge headlines were made over the holiday; it is not the most obvious stretch of incident for a biopic to dramatize. The idea is that we’re seeing an unpublicized chapter of personal history: a speculative portrait of the moment when Diana, a decade into her failing marriage, made the tough decision that she had to escape the royal family and all the oppressive scrutiny, expectation, and condescension that came with her position within it.
“A fable from a true tragedy,” the opening text promises, promisingly. Yet Spencer is airless as drama, every bit as hemmed in by its schematic design as Diana is by her life in the blinding spotlight. The problems begin with Stewart, an often terrific actor struggling to disappear into her role here. It’s hardly the end of the world that she doesn’t much look or sound like Diana, that she hasn’t mastered the mannerisms or the accent. In lieu of a convincing impersonation, however, what we mostly get is studied, breathy neurosis: a caricature of frazzling nerves. Stewart never seems to find an emotional reality for the icon she’s playing; the resonance begins and ends with the stunt casting of one hounded target of the bursting flashbulbs as another.
Once before has Larraín torn back the curtain of a dynastic dream life to find a nightmare there instead, and gone searching for the real person behind the famous woman behind the famous man. But his Jackie benefitted from the gut-wrenching urgency of the news it covered, and the arrestingly, disorientingly subjective lens through which it viewed them. Spencer is stuck in that big house, and with a psychological profile that reads like a list of tabloid fixations: the struggles with bulimia (those famous Sandringham toilets do make an appearance after all) and self-harm; the spats with an icy, highly divorceable Charles (Jack Farthing); biopic-mandated family baggage. The film can regard the whispers of Diana “cracking up” as ruthless gossip, while still indulging them through cameos by the specter of Anne Boleyn and hallucinations of Diana’s lone confidante (Sally Hawkins) among the help.
It all stinks of Steven Knight, the British screenwriter of Locked Down, Locke, and some films without “locke” in the title, who never met a theme he couldn’t work out endlessly for us. Every character in Spencer seems in danger of unpacking the full significance of their existence aloud. “There has to be two of you,” one Sandringham staffer tells Diana, helpfully defining the public-private duality of her role. Later, the Queen herself pops by to explain that you don’t just appear on currency, you are currency. When the dialogue doesn’t do the heavy lifting, there’s a scarecrow or an old jacket or a flock of pheasants or another old house over the hill to shoulder it. The film feels pre-analyzed, its ideas all laid out as neatly as the spread at the royal Christmas dinner.
Spencer’s arc is of liberation: By the end, Diana—literally born into nobility, but never mind—stands like a defiant pillar of realness, facing down the barrels of her stilted, stifling relatives by marriage. It’s very nearly slobs versus snobs, complete with a bucket of unpretentious (and un-regurgitated) KFC and Mike + The Mechanics on the radio, a rejoinder to that stuffy string quartet playing over supper. Spencer is never intentionally so funny, though it does hint at the absurdities of royal life a more mischievous filmmaker might make a yuletide feast out of: a line of dogs exiting a limo, the tradition of weighing guests to make sure they’ve put on three pounds of holiday “enjoyment,” etc.
One is left to admire the textures, the way Larraín at once delivers and undercuts the glamour of his extravagant setting. Spencer was shot on celluloid by Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’s Claire Mathon, and it has a sometimes gauzy, beatific glow that suits Diana’s feelings of drowning in decorum, the rules enveloping her as surely as the billowy dresses it’s insisted she wears. Larraín has also commissioned a typically hypnotic score from Jonny Greenwood, whose almost free-jazz noodling here might be better suited to a wilder, less cleanly managed character study. Or at least one that found a better window into the haunted house of Diana’s head.
180 Comments
Spencer: Di another Day.
My calendar is pretty full so it looks like I’ll have . . . No Time To Di.
When it turns up on Netflix you’ll be able to Live and let Di in the privacy of your own home!
I’ll wait until this is on streaming. I guess that means I’ll Di Another Day.
Not tomorrow though, tomorrow never Dis.
The Di is (mis)cast!
Absolutely
You guys need to lay the hell off this poor woman. Please live, and let…Di.
You used to say live and let live(you know you did you know you did you know you did)
Nobody does it better . . . no, actually, practically everyone does it better.
No Time To Diet
Tomorrow never, Di
Spencer: Di another Day.
If we had a better commenting system, you might’ve been able to delete this duplicate comment. Unfortunately for you, the Di is cast.
Do or do not . . . there is no Di.
Interesting take, and one that seems pretty at odds with what many others are saying. I guess I’ll have to make my own decision about things, but it looks great from where I’m standing.
Saw it a couple of weeks ago and disagree with almost everything in this review.
Saw it last night, and I couldn’t agree more…sometimes (this being one of them) I read an A.A. Dowd review and I wonder whether the gun they hold to his head to write these things changes, or if it’s the same one every time. Buddy if you don’t actually like movies (which at least 50% of your reviews would suggest) it’s ok to do something else…
yes, I feel this take doesn’t quite understand what a life Diana was herself in a world of ghosts.
there’s a lot of criticism/ridicule aimed at Kristen Stewart across these sites. they haven’t gotten over Twilight, apparently.
I was watching Katya with Ju Ju Be making fun of the movies on Netflix ‘s YouTube channel. It was bad I think I could sit thru the movies if someone was mocking them.
Is there? I see a lot of fawning over her recent roles, although I confess that I am somewhat baffled by her popularity in certain quarters (See that SNL opening monologue that seems like it was written for Beyonce)
Rarely do people talk about her without mentioning Twilight, but I don’t see more criticism of her than the usual ‘she always looks bored’. I will say she did herself no favors by saying the ghost of Di came round and signed off on her performance.
But it’s Twilight: Mopey Princess from the trailer alone. Stewart is fantastic in other things I’ve seen of hers, but this was classic malaise that she’s perfected.
Basically everywhere else has given it raves.
Things have degraded to the point at the AV Club that I’m expecting Armond White to be added to the staff at any time now.
I’ve seen both. It’s going for something different, and either it comes together and works for you or it doesn’t. There’s a lot of love for the source character and Stewart herself that bleeds into some of the reviews I’ve read, so maybe that’s the key. If you have a high opinion/ interest in either it’ll work, or it will just seem kind of messy.
Yeah, I thought this was an odd review, considering nearly every other critic is saying that Stewart’s performance is one of her best, and for many it’s the best thing about the film.
I saw it last night, expecting to hate it (I was asked to go) but ended up really enjoying it. Most of the things singled out as negatives I thought worked and at the very least, were intentional choices. Including Stewart’s performance. And I did find it funny in its way! The absurdity of the situation was its own joke. The tragedy was Diana was the only one who seemed to know it, and I think the movie captured that feeling.
It’s the first truly great movie of the year imo. I can’t imagine sitting through this film and not being completely absorbed by the artistry and emotion. Everyone’s firing on all cylinders.
It’s very nearly slobs versus snobs, complete with a bucket of unpretentious (and un-regurgitated) KFC…This movie could’ve been so much better if they had Diana demolishing a 20-piece bucket then unleashing a thunderous belch right in the Queen’s face.
Or leaving a massive dump in one of the aforementioned functioning commodes.
and Kurt Russell as Prince Charles
By now, what the Diana Cinematic Universe really needs is a multiversal team-up movie with Stewart, Elizabeth Debicki and Naomi Watts.
If DC buy the rights they can team up Multiverse Dianas to form some sort of Di-Squad to, I don’t know, run some charities.
“Princess of Wales powers–activate!”
Di-sis on Infinite Windsors.
“What are we, some sort of vehicular manslaughter squad?”
You’re calling for (a) Di-Verse-ity in Hollywood?
Any cameos from Emma Corrin? I enjoyed her portrayal in the Crown season 4, she starts off as very weird/mysterious, and has clear visions of greatness despite also being an underachiever at that point in her life.
Don’t forget Catherine Oxenberg. She played Diana Spencer in two TV movies. What’s really interesting is that the first is very ‘pro’ isn’t it a romantic fairy tale in 1982, while the latter is ‘con’ what a horrible shit show in 1992. Plus, for Oxenberg herself being a distant cousin of the British royal family.
Jack FarthingIf this person was going to make up a fake British name, they could’ve tried a little harder.
It’s almost like a prank call name
I recently watched an older British movie whose cinematographer was named “Dick Bush.” My wife pointed out that it probably didn’t register as odd to his parents, since it wasn’t “Tadger Fanny.”
Or “Knob Minge.”
Fanny Numpty
I don’t know, I feel the most British name would be Sir Cecil Sopwith.
Bonus points if the “W” is silent, somehow. That said, it’s still not “St John Horsfall.”
When was he knighted? I thought he was an Earl and an OBE (which made him an Earlobe)
Sir Cecil Sopwith ffolkes-Smythe.
And his fox-hunting rival, Nigel Wotsallthisthen
All the actors are called that now. Stephen Graham and Paddy Considine are doing all the heavy lifting for working-class actors. Otherwise, it’s just Jack Farthings all the way down.
Niles Nigel Humphries Halifax?
A fun game to play, if you happen to have an atlas of Great Britain handy, is to go through it and try to find the funniest town name. There are a great many improbable town names in Great Britain. I usually ignore the ones that I can’t pronounce, like anything in Welsh or Gaelic, but that doesn’t limit the scope at all.
A fun game to play, if you happen to have an atlas of Great Britain handy, is to go through it and try to find the funniest town name. There are a great many improbable town names in Great Britain. I usually ignore the ones that I can’t pronounce, like anything in Welsh or Gaelic, but that doesn’t limit the scope at all.
As soon as the trailer made sure to emphasize the scene where she said someone was going to kill her, you knew what this movie was likely to be. If we continue to get thinkpieces on Diana then maybe we should get some on how these “sympathetic” movies and shows are just as happy to exploit her name and image for a quick buck.
The Haunting of Princess Diana premiering in 3… 2…
Like Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and Donald Rumsfield before her, it was our insatiable adoration and need for more of her that killed her.
So Kissenger had her killed too?
All of the above. Also Amelia Earhart when he was a teenager
Henry was a real bastard.
What happened to being floored?!!
I knew this would be shit the moment I found out there’s a scene between Diana and Anne Boleyn. That’s both so on the nose symbolism and batshit insane in equal measure. What a mess. I’ve also heard the Broadway musical isn’t not particularly good. Bad time to be a Di fan.
To be fair, this has gotten most extremely good reviews. The musical? Not even close–some of us relish it as one of those really awful, camp musical theatre productions that actually only come every so often (it most seems to resemble the 1980s Marilyn musical flop…)
The clips I’ve seen of the musical are so wrong-headed it’s stunning. My jaw dropped.
I don’t know if it was a brilliant move to film it before its premier and release it to Netflix or just a suicide note. I assume the thinking was it might catch on with Netflix viewers and cause positive word of mouth before the terrible reviews come out (although the San Diego try out already got some howlingly nasty reviews
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/theater/reviews/la-et-cm-diana-review-20190305-story.html )
I don’t get the favorable comparisons to “Jackie”. Isn’t that the one with Natalie Portman? It was god awful.
Portman is either really good or absolutely terrible, there’s no in between
Portman is either really good or absolutely terrible, there’s no in between
Ive had the pleasure of reading all the songs for the musical and oh boy. I believe a reviewer said her death was less messy then the musical.
I mean there’s a song devoted to her “fuck you dress”. And the lyrics (in her power ballad she focuses on wanting to leave the crown and really really wants a daughter–poorly rhymed with a myriad other words) are, wow. As usual with these head scratching musicals the performers are hard to fault (and the great Judy Kaye is part of the cast) but you wonder how they spent YEARS making every other single decision they did and never realized how wrong headed it was (and I’m someone who agrees with Sondheim that, in theory, anything is fair game to become a musical). Maybe that’s part of the problem–it takes YEARS to create one of these musicals and maybe the creators become blind to just how bad the show is…
The most damning thing one can say, is that its both awful and probably not offensive enough to anger the royal family or Diana if she was alive. Its a special kind of bad. Also it needs to be seen by everyone, words don’t do it injustice enough.
Ha, that’s the perfect description. That same LA Times critic who reviewed the San Diego try-out claims that they actually seem to have tried hard to add some nuance for the Broadway production–which doesn’t help.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-10-04/diana-musical-netflix-broadway-review
I’ve been editing a little video for the library with whatever bits of time I can manage for weeks now. This morning I realized I have no idea if it’s any good or utter crap. I can only imagine how hard it would be to know after years.
That’s actually a really good parallel. I think that’s what happens with a lot of these Broadway shows where people always wonder “how could it get this far” or “what were they thinking?” In the current climate they usually start workshopping a show 5 years before it ever reaches the commercial theatre—and it takes up so much of the creators’ lives (and, in cases like this, they keep getting money from people telling them it’s good), and so many people get involved in needing the show to succeed, that there’s no rational dissenting voice. Which is why they used to bring in a Jerome Robbins or Michael Bennett to look at shows that were getting bad reviews out of town, and to either try to fix the shows or at least offer an outside constructive critique, but I don’t think that really exists anymore…
I hope it’s just as bad as the Nixon one with the Kennedy painting. “When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.”
If I recall he really did that, a couple staffers saw him arguing with paintings at night. That’s a case of real life being really cliche.
I was wondering how much of that was based on real stuff. Stone sometimes unearths true things but also sometimes speculates to the point of “nah that didn’t REALLY happen!” I don’t really believe Pat Nixon wanting a divorce, for example. Except maybe after that time he hit her
Oliver Stone famously isn’t someone who pays close attention to historical facts and I’m pretty sure you are correct about the divorce bit. Its been ages since I saw that film. I just remember the arguing with paintings part is surprisingly real.
Really? That’s actually the only detail about this movie that makes we want to see it – a princess haunted by the (occasionally headless) ghosts of her husbands’ ancestors’ wives is a pretty fun idea.
I can’t stand the royals and I can’t stand musicals. Is it weird that I really want to see the Broadway musical?
It’s makes total sense in a kind of double negative way!
I think we’re done with Diana content for about…..ever.
You’ll take Elizabeth Debecki as Diana in season 5 of the crown and you’ll damn well enjoy it!
I’ll take Elizabeth Debicki in literally anything. That’s hardly fair.
I have thought for two years she was in Succession. Til it dawned on me it’s Caitlyn Fitzgerald.
Kristen Stewart is 5’5″. That’s like what 6 inches shorter than Diana? Elizabeth Debicki seems more physically appropriate. I saw photos from the season they’re filming now and at first glance I really thought it was an older photo of Diana.I don’t think Stewart is that great an actress, I’ve never seen her play anything but mopey, but then I guess that is what is called for here. This has hot mess written all over it.
I think if you average out Debicki and Stewart, you would be pretty close to Diana’s height.
She was 5’10”, so a bit closer to Elizabeth. This is the photo I was referring to. Just look at it briefly, don’t examine it at first. The resemblance is amazing.
Debicki is 6’ 3” so Stewart is just as close to Diana’s height as she is.
I am pretty damn excited for that.
Yeah the weird outcrop of Di material this year is well past my limit for monarchy porn. Christ you’d assume she died last month.
Trust me, if you remember what it was like a month after she died, you wouldn’t mistake now for then. It was literally Diana on every page of every paper for six months (or, in the case of the Express, for several years – they were still regularly putting her picture on the front page every few weeks 10-15 years later).
Your right. 1997 must have been a never ending nightmare of content. It was considered a world tragedy
27 hours of continuous coverage in the UK, on all the main non-Cable channels.
For comparison, they were basically done with 9/11 after about five.
do they make monarchy porn at Fuckingham Palace?
No, you would assume, correctly, that she died long enough ago that we can actually process her death and approach it from an angle other than just shock and sadness.
Yeah, is it because she would’ve been 60? Or the 25th anniversary of her death next year? Why release it this year?! While by no means does Charles get a pass if Di looked like Camilla or Markle she wouldn’t be nearly as sainted. She had impeccable PR
Yeah I agree. I don’t hate her, far from it. I just legitimately don’t understand why people obsess with her after a quarter of a century. She’s like this holy obsession in England alongside Churchill and the Unknown Warrior.
Churchill at least did both great and terrible things, there’s an endless mine of a long life and a huge ego. Diana was kind of a blank slate, sure she helped bring awareness to causes and modernize the royals, but did that honestly shape history itself? Was she the person that interesting besides as a symbol?
I legit once saw a website name her as woman of the 20th century. For what? What did she do that Eleanor Roosevelt, Gloria Steinem or Aretha Franklin didn’t???
That makes me sad for women everywhere. I’m also sad that Jezebel is mostly inane celebrity gossip, but that’s another story. -He said, on a pop culture article about a celebrity movie
I related to your statement more then I’d like to admit.
These commemorative Diana plates ain’t gonna sell themselves!Well, they did, when I bought them in bulk in the late 90’s. I assumed these babies would appreciate in value. Anyway, Venmo me for dead lady plates
This movie would be a thousand times better if at the halfway point it was revealed that Di has telekinetic powers and she goes on a killing rampage throughout Sandringham, crushing people with armoires and ripping Charles limb from limb with her thoughts.
That’s how I feel about every movie. (And yes, it always has to be Di.)
So an X-men prequel. Yeah that would be fun.
The inclusion of a a Spencer mansion actually makes this a Resident Evil prequel.
Oh my goooood Diana was Lisa Trevor all along!
You can just hear the Queen Piper Laurie-ing at her “If you divorce Charles, they’re all going to laugh at you!”
well, we laughed when she married him.
well, some of us did.
It would’ve been more honest if they’d just dumped pig’s blood on her the moment she reached the altar at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The way they used to shellac ladies’ hair in place back then it would’ve probably gone flying in all directions at the assorted peripheral royals.
Which would still be pretty cool.
The ridiculously childish wedding dress on a ridiculous child to a question mark of a man.
that’s the one.
And The Emperor is her grandfather.
You’re really onto something. What is needed here the Tarantino/Django Unchained treatment. We are all tired of dye-jobs tilting their heads winsomely to try and capture that Princess Diana magic. Hand one of them a semi-automatic.
Heh. “Dye job.”
This VERY NEARLY happened in Marvel comics. X-Statix was originally going to do a story called Di Another Day, in which Diana resurrects with mutant powers. There was a hue and a cry, and at the last minute the character was reworked to be a fictional pop star with hastily re-colored hair.
She also appeared in a less… Unorthadox capacity in an 80s Avengers comic
Real life would also have been better if it had done that.
And then Hawk shows up and connects everything to to the Spencer For Hire cinematic universe.
Casting a dullard like Kristen Stewart to play someone as radiant as Princess Di is like getting Sam Worthington to voice the Genie in “Aladdin”.
Some feel that Diana was hardly an intellectual fireball, whose special skill was standing around looking concerned or happy as the occasion required.
She was well known for not being well-read, one of several things she didn’t have in common with Chuck, who was into classical literature and Shakespeare. She was into (gasp) Andrew Lloyd Weber!
But she did the 90’s celebrity thing of having “causes!” and didn’t need/wasn’t allowed to do much more than bring attention to them (and to be fair it worked. And she went the extra mile with AIDS advocacy)
While I was deeply irritated by the media obsession with her, both before and after her death (and it still irks me that a football match between Liverpool and Newcastle I’d been intending to go to the evening of her death was cancelled, as if it was a national tragedy rather than a personal one) I will always give her massive credit for what she did achieve with her fame on the good causes front. Her attitude towards AIDS victims was a big fucking deal, as was her land mines campaigning.
I concur. I’m not a fan because of the obsession and general distaste of monarchy. But hugging children with AIDS was an incredibly powerful move that did a lot of good. I respect her for that.
Christopher Hitchens used to refer to her as a vapid disco queen, which makes the casting of Kristen Stewart absolutely perfect.
“fails to make compelling Diana’s struggles with royalty, he does” – Yoda
clickbait headline: one sentence about Stewart. Most of this review is a critique of the directing and the script.
“Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart of Twilight, is so tame it looks makes Harry Potter look like Squid Game. Fortnite Beyoncé.”
Ouch. So this biopic is more on the cosplay/impersonation side of the spectrum. I hate 90% of biopics. The ones that stand out for me are the unusual subjects, like Tonya Harding and Chuck Barris.
Interesting. All I’ve read is that Stewart is a shoe in for the Oscar this year due to her incredible performance. AV Club says she’s miscast. I will continue to say the writers here are constantly in bad moods.
If she pulls off this role I’ll be impressed, because there’s no question that on the surface it’s terrible casting.
There’s so little on display in “Jackie” besides an almost fetishized degree of female trauma, I couldn’t imagine sitting through another one. Larrain is obviously trying to be brave by looking directly at it, but his lack of interest in virtually any other aspect of his main characters seems creepy to me.
That was not my take on Jackie at all. To me, the film is transformative because it forces views to look beyond the fairytale the public fantasizes about and instead reveals a deeply layered woman in the spotlight of history. Natalie Portman was a revelation in Jackie.
I like how the Crown just made them fairly awful, but human people. It was refreshing
I concur.
The cure for insomnia is here.
Kristen Stewart: a scarecrow out-acted by an old jacket and a flock of pheasants.
“By the end, Diana—literally born into nobility, but never mind—stands like a defiant pillar of realness”this is kind of the point of Diana’s entire story though, she was born lonely. Yet she somehow came to exist as a very good albeit messy person in a part of society that doesn’t allow good people to develop. She’s an anomaly who didn’t even know how to order a drink at a bar but somehow ended up being relatable not just in her pain, but in her kindness.The title of the article seems to want to blame Stewart, that I shouldn’t have been surprised that this review felt like a teardown of another woman in Diana.
This looks so much like Larrain’s other biopic from a few years back, the torturously languid “Jackie”. The tone, style, everything…just sub Jackie Kennedy out and plug Princess Di in. No thanks…
As an English (little r) republican, nothing interests me less than films and TV about the royals*.At least overseas (little r) republicans can look on this with the horrified fascination of the outside, but we have to live with these wretches all year around. I like Kristen Stewart and I hope she does a good job (he says, desperately trying to justify a post that says “I have no interest in the subject matter at hand!”), but I can’t imagine I’ll see this unless I’m hiding out in a cabin with only this on DVD. Twice.* That’s not true, exactly. I’d see Spencer before I saw a Harry Potter spin-off, and that’s ignoring all the politics of those.
My condolences for the Crown making the monarchy more popular.
Living with them is bad, but it’s the paying for them that really irks me.
I’d be curious to know the numbers on the royal boost to the tourism industry, whether it breaks even or not. All nostalgic loyalty aside, I find it hard to imagine that so many people would support keeping the monarchy if it was truly costing a significant chunk of money…
That argument has always been bollocks. Do countries without monarchies have problems attracting tourists? Does the US? Does France?
Millions visit Versailles and the monarchy is nowhere in sight.
Way to miss the entire point of Versailles. It only exists because of the monarchy.
True, but it only exists because there was a Monarchy and they are still plastered over the walls.
Millions also visit cities funded by slavery and museums about slavery. Doesn’t mean we should still have slavery. Plus getting rid of the monarchy in places like France means you can actually visit Versailles properly. In central London you have the enormous Buckingham Palace which no one can go inside because the Queen sometimes lives there.There have also been reports that Balmoral castle occupies an area the size of Greater Manchester in some of the most glorious countryside in Britain and it’s basically all set aside so a few royals and their friends can shoot pheasants. Environmentally they are a fucking disgrace and yet they still lecture us about how we can combat climate change.
That wasn’t the point I was making. Just that these wonderful things exist because of how we were ruled in the past, rightly or wrongly. Pretty much the same legacy left by religion.
Exactly. My question was rhetorical.
Um… My point was “they probably wouldn’t keep the existing system if it was costing too much money,” not “the existing system is the only way to make money.” Duh, it’s possible to attract tourists without a monarchy. That’s not even remotely the question at issue.It’s like if I said “my current job doesn’t pay much but it comes out even since it gives me insurance coverage,” and you responded with “it’s possible to have insurance even with a different job.” Of course I could try to get a different job, but I already have a job. The question is whether this one’s fine or whether I should go to the bother of finding a new one.Edited to add: If your argument is “the fact that it makes money through tourism shouldn’t be a reason to keep the monarchy,” i.e., you want to get rid of it for philosophical reasons – ok, that’s a valid argument. But it’s not what I was talking about. In my example above, it’s the equivalent of “sure, it comes out even monetarily, but you don’t actually enjoy the work.”
OK – but the idea that the monarchy would only be retained if it was cost effective flies in the face of experience. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, the monarchy is how that refuge is decorated.
Are you arguing that experience shows us Monarchies are maintained even if they aren’t cost effective, or We don’t keep monarchies even if they are cost effective? Either way, my whole point was “I’d be curious to see the numbers,’ so if you have some, I’d be interested. Otherwise, we’re just exchanging philosophical theories totally divorced from fact.
I mean, if you get rid of the royals, the castles are still there.
..and the jewels, silver, cathedrals, etc., etc.
This movie makes the monarchy look horrible, as it should, crown haters like you (and myself) will enjoy it a lot.
Who plays Walt Tremblay in the movie?
Would we call Stewart stunt casting? Despite some lingering Twilight BS, she’s widely considered an incredible actress and is, like Diana was, quite beautiful to boot—and looks as much like Diana as any other actress who’s played her in the last few years. She’s not British, but otherwise this just seems like a … good casting choice? Whether she’s right for the role is subjective (although most other reviews seem to disagree with you), but including that in your review here seems to be a bit of a sad attempt to stay part of the general pop culture conversation around Stewart—about 3-4 years late. Move on.
yeah it’s a stunt clickbait title, that feels deliberate in a “blame the woman” pile on. ironically a movie about a woman who suffered a lifetime of blame the wife syndrome. there’s a weird undercurrent of man rage in the whole review lol.
Lookswise she nailed it. I don’t know if I can imagine her with an accent though
Maybe, juuuust maybe, Pablo Larraín is a tad overrated? This comes on the heels of Lisey’s Story, which was godawful.
This film was never going to be for me, since I never gave a damn about Princess Diana and have never seen a Kristen Stewart film, but I do think this review is an outlier. The movie has been well received generally.
shes not good.
So basically, another movie about British royalty, yawn.
I have the same petty casting problem with this movie as I did with the pretty good biopic Milk. Kristen Stewart is way too short to play Diana, who was kind of giraffe like and too shy to be as tall as she was. Harvey Milk was a towering lumbering presence, while Sean Penn is not. Yes, I said petty. But it’s true.
I always found Spencer pretty dull when Hawk wasn’t around.
It’s a shame Commander Sisko never got to bust out a “Spen-SAAAAH!” on DS9.
Steven Knight’s Loch Ness when?
If you don’t understand that Diana was a deeply neurotic, frazzled person, that’s on you. You seem to have bought the myth that she was some Messianic angel-like figure who had everything done to her, and did none of her own. I’m not demonizing her, just portraying the facts.
I find it so odd that Larrain’s work for the US film industry has focussed so closely on prominent women in positions proximate to power but not in control themselves. His work done in Chile, while similarly close character portraits, was focused much more often than not on men rather than women, and men who were furthermore positioned at the periphery of pivotal historical and political events, rather than at their center. It’s a shift rather than a full on 180 degree turn for sure, and it makes sense in some ways, but it also seems to be a less than optimal use of his skills.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m a stupid idiot!”– AA DOWD
Saw this at the London Film Festival this year, and sat through most of it thinking, “What is this film for??” It wasn’t faithful enough to be biography, and not daring enough to be seen as an artsy take, and there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been seen a million times before, even from a single episode of The Crown. But, I have to say, I thought Stewart did sterling work, here, and I’ve often found her glazed, blank stylings annoying in the past. In fact, the bedrock of the film for me was the acting, with even Sean Harris giving a performance that was actually intelligible. That and the constant demanding knocks at the door and the montage with Di running through the corridors in various outfits, interspersed with scenes of her childhood, which really made the film come alive for me.
Not to eye-shame, but, how did they get Stewart’s eyes that wide open? She seems eternally high.
she doesn’t much look or sound like Diana, that she hasn’t mastered the mannerisms or the accent…’cause Stewart is just not that good.
The problems begin with Stewart, an often terrific actor struggling to disappear into her role here.Couldn’t disagree more with this. I think it’s primarily because Stewart isn’t under a ton of makeup and voice work to mimic Diana that she nails it. She’s her own take on it and there were legitimately a few times that I forgot I was watching Kristin Stewart.
Couldn’t disagree more with this review. The film is a fascinating and unique approach to Diana and biopics in general. I was never expecting to see Princess Diana meets The Shining, but it worked so well, and the end result was a deeply distressing piece of work. Kristen Stewart seemed like such odd casting at first, but she really was amazing, as was the entire production.
Just watched, and I don’t know how anyones takeaway from this movie was that Stewart was miscast. She completely disappears into the role so completely, and brings so much angst to a very anxiety driven movie. Simply amazing performance, despite some flaws in the movie itself in the third act.
I’d say Dowd was too kind to this one. I think one scene in particular sums up how poorly it presents Diana. Spall’s character is made out as some kind of royals spy who’s out to get her. But when they finally have a conversation, he talks of the duty he feels toward the crown and of his soldier friend who died. Her response is that she hopes his friend’s horse was never tamed. Good gracious, lady. I can’t imagine the real Diana was so self-centered.That’s pretty much the entire movie. Diana skulks around while servants wait on her and everyone else (including the Queen!) waits on her. Stewart’s performance had one level – breathy exasperation. I don’t know if it was her inability to master a full-voiced accent or a directorial decision, but it was not effective. The whole thing was so melodramatic to the point of being laughable at times – eating the pearls, being a scarecrow, running away and eating fried chicken. Diana deserved better than this.