DIRECTED BY-:
Pablo Larrain
STARRING-:
Kristen Stewart
Timothy Spall
Sean Harris
YEAR OF RELEASE-:
2021
PREMISE-:
Diana Spencer, struggling with mental-health problems during her Christmas holidays with the Royal Family at their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, decides to end her decade-long marriage to Prince Charles.
THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE.
THE NEGATIVES-: - In a few scenes, the “evilness” of the royal family became a bit caricature-ish and exaggerated.
- The film would have vastly improved if some dialogues and scenes incorporated a bit more subtlety while exploring its themes. For example, showing Diana literally walk away in Anne Boleyn’s dress was a bit redundant and unnecessarily reiterated the ideas which were pretty firmly established in the previous scenes.
THE POSITIVES-: - Kristen Stewart gives her career’s best performance in this film. She not only manages to successfully encapsulate the major psychological turmoil that Diana was going through, but is also able to skillfully depict the nuances of her emotions with subtle changes in facial expressions, tone, and body language.
- The numerous conflicts that Diana has to encounter - Charles’ affair, strict purposeless traditions, intrusions on her privacy, restrictions on her freedom, and the apathetic behavior of the royal family - not only make the film constantly engaging and intriguing, but also help in justifying Diana’s troubled mental and emotional state. This makes the film really easy to comprehend for even someone who has no prior idea about the royal family. By actually depicting various instances of these conflicts, the script soaks itself in hefty drama, and in the process, makes us feel sympathy for Diana on its own merit, without having to solely rely on the audience’s pre-existing knowledge of her from the real world.
- Although this is a Diana-centric film, the few side characters that get a bit of screen time were also written consistently well and were brilliantly acted out by Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris, and Timothy Spall.
- While the acting, writing, costumes, sets, and makeup are all certainly good, it’s the cinematography and the background score that come close to being perfect. ‘Spencer’ is a hauntingly beautiful looking film and it’s definitely one of the best shot movies of the year. Almost every frame of the movie looks like a masterfully crafted painting. The background score by Jonny Greenwood is absolutely fantastic and is, without a doubt, the soul of the film. Together, the score and the cinematography lend a suspenseful, suffocating, and chilling horror - esque tone to the film, which makes the viewing experience extremely captivating, immersive, and memorable.
RATING -: 7/10
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