Spencer (2021), a psychological thriller about the late Princess Diana, randomly crossed my mind and pissed me off all over again. I watched this movie shortly after release with my boyfriend at the time and immediately thought less of him when he said he loved it.
The entire point of Princess Diana’s story is that she wasn’t crazy. Spencer’s premise, where Diana’s sanity slips out from under her in the lead up to her divorce from Prince Charles, is fundamentally flawed and its execution is even worse. This movie is not some self-aware think piece, it is trauma porn chock-full of tar and feathers that misses the mark on every front.
Spencer resurrected the witch hunt on a woman who was deeply failed by the world around her. It is disgraceful to publicly degrade Diana in death just as she was in life.
Princess Diana’s time as a public figure is harrowing to read about. It shows how the myth of female hysteria pervades through the modern age, and is especially pushed on women with modern sensibilities, like her.
One story that exemplifies that history is how the British Royal Family tried to hop her up on Valium to sedate her after she discovered Prince Charles’ affair. The only excuse that worked was her saying she couldn’t pill pop because she was ‘pregnant with the future King’. Despite her being the Empire’s most valuable show pony, their loyalties lied solely with a half-baked Prince William in his first era of baldness.
Such a reckless and inaccurate depiction of one of the most documented women of all time would be impressive —if it weren’t so transparently a projection of the filmmakers’ own ideals. Of course, parts were played up to make it a thriller. I’m not naïve. Only vague, shallow gestures to self awareness were made, but just to reach a quota.
Spencer comes across like an attempt to knock Diana down a peg—their bitter, fussy, bitchy version of Diana—especially in the grotesque, over-sexualized scenes of her self-harming. Trauma porn should, at the very least, assert itself as such. But insecurity seeps through this trite attempt at Indie Filmmaking. Don’t pan to the gardens of Sandringham shortly after a sensual bout of self-induced vomiting! This movie meanders in its misogyny so much, it’s like if some guy started stuttering in the middle of sexually harassing you.
Connecting Princess Diana’s story to that of Anne Boleyn’s, who was beheaded by her husband King Henry VIII, could have been interesting, but it fell short (actually, it started receding into itself) because of the sympathy extended to the establishment that abused both women.
They also had to make Princess Diana out to be a bitch, to justify stringing her up on screen. Unlike how she acts in Spencer, there are countless testimonials about how she never treated her staff poorly, even with her aristocratic socialization and what she endured. That is a key part of her tale. But viewers either too young to remember the Queen of Our Hearts, or unaware of her history for whatever reason, are left with the impression that this was her character to some extent.
After this movie came out, as I openly adore Diana, I would be approached with innocent (but loaded) follow-up questions about her time as a Royal. Steam nearly spilled from my ears at the mere mention of Spencer, because her short time on earth sure as hell wasn’t spent picking away at the palace’s Yellow Wallpaper.
I will go so far as to call Spencer an abomination. A man should have never been tasked with making this movie. Just because something stars Kristen Stewart is and costumed by Chanel doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because someone was so famous that it killed them doesn’t mean they deserve such a denigration of the entire medium of film.
