How Not to Approach Princess Diana

I s there anything quite so unfortunate as a movie made by mediocrities trying to win Oscars? Spencer, directed by Pablo Larraín, an extremely earnest Chilean who gave us Jackie, and starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in a performance that practically comes with a neon light blinking “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” over her head at all times, strikes the same tragic chord over and over again for 116 wretched minutes. “In 1991, Diana was depressed,” this movie tells us in every scene, hoping that the audience will mistake thudding melodrama for seriousness or importance.

Stewart, who is (1) on screen virtually every minute and mostly filmed in (2) dramatic close-ups as she plays the (3) dead (4) British (5) world-famous (6) historical figure, is given six of the seven most reliable tools guaranteed to manufacture a Best Actress Oscar (the seventh, ugly-face makeup, isn’t really applicable here). Stewart was a fine and interesting actress before she became a star, unlike Robert Pattinson, who had no ability whatsoever when they started to work together. Now, they’ve reversed positions; he has become a highly compelling actor, and she has unlearned everything. Stewart is completely awful in this unbearable drone of a movie.

Stewart plays a loony, isolated, forlorn Princess of Wales who, when we first meet her, is getting resoundingly lost as she drives her Porsche to Sandringham House (an estate in Norfolk) on Christmas Eve of 1991. Given that she spent part of her childhood in the house next door, this breakdown in basic navigational proficiency might be hard to believe, but then again, no amount of dizzy-dame behavior can quite be ruled out when it comes to Diana. Implausibility isn’t exactly the problem with the movie. The problem is that it’s like a symphony scored for only two instruments: cello and gong.

Leaden, airless, and so constipated it should seek medical advice lest it burst and make a mess, Spencer is an endless succession of tiresome Oscar-grubbing moments. Stewart’s overacting made me wince every time she theatrically tosses a shoulder or flips her hair. For reasons unknown, she spends the entire movie speaking in a melodramatic stage whisper, which is meant to heighten the drama but instead heightens the artifice. Stewart doesn’t sound like Diana. (She doesn’t even sound British.) She doesn’t gesture like Diana. She is simply made up to look like Diana.

This was the last Christmas Diana would spend with the royal family, and in the film, she is barely on speaking terms with anyone in the Firm except her two sons. The Queen occasionally casts a frosty gaze at her, though Diana is pretty well used to that, understanding herself to be hated by every royal present. She mainly talks to staffers such as an equerry (a slimmed-down Timothy Spall), a dresser (Sally Hawkins), and a chef (Sean Harris), all of whom gently try to steer her away from doing unheard-of things such as skipping Christmas dinner or wearing her dresses in the wrong order. Charles (a refreshingly restrained Jack Farthing) looks at her as though she’s an alien but does ask her to consider that she’s insulting the chickens when she regurgitates the eggs the staff made her for breakfast.

The gilded-cage aspects of Diana’s existence are worthy of sympathy, and once Charles had returned his attentions to Camilla Parker-Bowles, it must have been miserable to be his deserted wife. Still, scene after scene grinds the point to dust. Around midnight on Christmas Eve, the princess scarfs desserts in the pantry. She wanders the grounds in the wee hours with wire cutters so she can escape to visit her childhood home, then cuts her arm with them. She contemplates hurling herself down the stairs. She gets obsessed with the famously royal-displeasing Anne Boleyn, then starts communing with Boleyn’s ghost.

Learning that pheasants are beautiful but thick, and are bred merely to be shot, Diana starts to identify with the birds and does her best to get shot like one. It’s all too much, and then some. The script, by Steven Knight, is sprinkled with howlers that sound like they were recycled from Dynasty: “Hold on, fight them, be beautiful!” “Tell them I’m not at all well.” “Will they kill me, do you think?” “Now leave me, I wish to masturbate.”

It adds up to the bitterest royal Christmas since 1183, but at least the characters in The Lion in Winter were witty. Spencer is simply a wallow in lugubriousness, topped by what might be the most depressing dancing-by-myself montage I’ve ever seen.

Yet after three days of misery, things wind up on Boxing Day with an unlikely wacky ending. Thanks to The Crown, we’ve seen how Diana’s story, and royal dramas in general, can be handled with all of the dramatic urgency of soap operas yet imbued with psychological insight and told with finely polished dialogue. Comparing these two treatments of the same subject reminds us why premium television has far surpassed the cultural power and importance of Oscar(™)-brand movies.