Spencer. (12A.)
Directed by Pablo Larraín.
Starring Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Stella Gonet and Sally Hawkins. 110 mins.
If we're doing Spencers I'd have gone for Frank, but this big-screen Spencer is Lady Diana, enduring a diva martyrdom in her last Royal family Christmas at Sandringham. She is desperate, hysterical, self-harming and insists on being late for everything; they are cold, unyielding, emotionless and tied to tradition. What a crowd – some mothers really do have 'em.
Early on Diana complains that it's always freezing there because they never turn the heating up. I'm guessing this is the line that attracted Chilean director Larrain to the project: bringing the chill to portraits of rich celebrity women in pain is becoming his niche. In Jackie, he followed the First Widow, Ms Bouvier/ Kennedy/ Onnasis through a freezing week in Washington after her husband's assassination. Corralled by a phenomenal score by Mica Levi, it was a tunnel-visioned mood piece, a sustained yell of anguish. This is attempting the same thing but trying to make a whole movie in a single key is a tricky task and neither the script, by Steven Knight, nor the score by Jonny Greenwood is up to it.
Kristen Stewart is up to it though. She isn't as good as the girl in The Crown, but as an unknown who could be made up to look exactly like her, Emma Corrin did have an advantage. Stewart has to put quite a bit of work in but after some initial scepticism, the mannerisms and the voice soften from imitation into performance. Previously Naomi Watts made a terrible hash of the role in Diana, a much-mocked film that made a Mills and Boom romance of the story. This approaches the subject from an opposite direction, with tremendous reserve and arthouse high-mindedness, but is almost as laughable and ridiculous.
The movie cuts itself a swathe of slack, describing itself as, "A Fable from a True Tragedy." Of course, it's not real, but it's going for a deeper truth. Or perhaps a lie. Thanks to Elton, Diana has replaced Marilyn as the culture's prefered tragic blonde heroine and this is pushing the line about how she was a woman of the people crushed by the iron throne. The servants all love her, she is a wonderful mother to the boys but they won't let her be. The royal family are largely extras in this, only Liz (Gonet) and Charles (Farthing) get lines and not that many. The rest might as well be statues.
Yet Diana is kind of a hateful figure. The film's narrow window means the causes of her fragile mental state and antipathy from the family aren't explored so all we see is a woman deliberately playing up and throwing strops and hissy fits in a determined effort to ruin everyone's Christmas. She keeps saying she wants things to be normal but what could be normal than enduring a miserable Christmas at the in-laws?
Directed by Pablo Larraín.
Starring Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Stella Gonet and Sally Hawkins. 110 mins.
If we're doing Spencers I'd have gone for Frank, but this big-screen Spencer is Lady Diana, enduring a diva martyrdom in her last Royal family Christmas at Sandringham. She is desperate, hysterical, self-harming and insists on being late for everything; they are cold, unyielding, emotionless and tied to tradition. What a crowd – some mothers really do have 'em.
Early on Diana complains that it's always freezing there because they never turn the heating up. I'm guessing this is the line that attracted Chilean director Larrain to the project: bringing the chill to portraits of rich celebrity women in pain is becoming his niche. In Jackie, he followed the First Widow, Ms Bouvier/ Kennedy/ Onnasis through a freezing week in Washington after her husband's assassination. Corralled by a phenomenal score by Mica Levi, it was a tunnel-visioned mood piece, a sustained yell of anguish. This is attempting the same thing but trying to make a whole movie in a single key is a tricky task and neither the script, by Steven Knight, nor the score by Jonny Greenwood is up to it.
Kristen Stewart is up to it though. She isn't as good as the girl in The Crown, but as an unknown who could be made up to look exactly like her, Emma Corrin did have an advantage. Stewart has to put quite a bit of work in but after some initial scepticism, the mannerisms and the voice soften from imitation into performance. Previously Naomi Watts made a terrible hash of the role in Diana, a much-mocked film that made a Mills and Boom romance of the story. This approaches the subject from an opposite direction, with tremendous reserve and arthouse high-mindedness, but is almost as laughable and ridiculous.
The movie cuts itself a swathe of slack, describing itself as, "A Fable from a True Tragedy." Of course, it's not real, but it's going for a deeper truth. Or perhaps a lie. Thanks to Elton, Diana has replaced Marilyn as the culture's prefered tragic blonde heroine and this is pushing the line about how she was a woman of the people crushed by the iron throne. The servants all love her, she is a wonderful mother to the boys but they won't let her be. The royal family are largely extras in this, only Liz (Gonet) and Charles (Farthing) get lines and not that many. The rest might as well be statues.
Yet Diana is kind of a hateful figure. The film's narrow window means the causes of her fragile mental state and antipathy from the family aren't explored so all we see is a woman deliberately playing up and throwing strops and hissy fits in a determined effort to ruin everyone's Christmas. She keeps saying she wants things to be normal but what could be normal than enduring a miserable Christmas at the in-laws?
