July 8, 2022
I just got done watching the film Spencer, which came out last year and is directed by Pablo Larrain. I saw an Actors on Actors Zoom interview that Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart had done with each other, and in the interview they were discussing their films, Being the Ricardos and Spencer respectively. I really loved this interview and it made me even more excited to see Spencer. But I haven’t been to a movie theater since 2020 and may not plan to go back for a while (I might just try wearing a mask but who knows. The COVID-19 situation is always changing.) so I decided to wait until it was streaming to watch it. I found it on Google Play for a good deal, I could rent it for $1.99. Seeing as how I’m saving money and finding a new job (also, it’s hot down here and I was too lazy to go to the public library and get a copy), and I craved a movie to watch, I couldn’t resist the temptation. So I got Spencer and I must say, it was a really good movie. I have seen Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan in Twilight and Joan Jett in The Runaways but seriously this was one of her best roles yet. She played Princess Diana with the utmost concentration and it kind of reminded me of Natalie Portman playing Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie. It’s a similar genre: both are psychological dramas that get into the private minds of these public figures, and how they grapple with being in the public eye and telling their own stories without anyone trying to speak for them.
One key theme that I got from the film is the theme of freedom. Everything in the film, even the smallest details, is about how Princess Diana felt constrained by her environment and in the end found her freedom by saying no to it. I don’t know much about Princess Diana other than what I learned in history class in high school, and of course the film is a biopic so it was based on true events but is still fiction, but the film gave some glimpse into how Diana might have lived life and the effects it might have had on her self-image and her views about life and the world. Throughout the movie, Diana struggles with her mental health, in particular bulimia. She also encounters Anne Boleyn in many of her hallucinations, and Anne seems to constantly tell her that she is not free in any true sense and that she needs to get away from the pressures that everyone puts on her. In one scene Diana is eating soup with her family and it seems that everyone around her is looking at her in a strange way, and she sees Anne Boleyn, and then seems to rips off her pearl necklace and eat the soup with the pearls in it. She stumbles to the bathroom and vomits. In another scene she goes into the kitchen after hours and eats many of the food items from the fridge. Alistair Gregory (played by Timothy Spall) finds her and tells her to be careful about what she does in the palace since there has been a lot of publicity, particularly about Diana not keeping her curtains closed. Diana tells him to mind his business but he reiterates that he is only doing his job. This shows that even though Diana has all this wealth and prestige by being part of the royal family, she can’t just do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, because everything she does–what she says, how she behaves–will be reflected in the press’s stories about the royal family.
This movie shows that even the seemingly everyday things that we as humans take for granted can have profound significance to someone who doesn’t just get to move about and freely take those things for granted. The house that Diana grew up in is another example. She keeps telling the royal staff that she wants to go home, and leaves the grounds of the palace to go back to her old home, but the guards and everyone tells her it is boarded up for a reason and that she’s not supposed to go in there. When she finally finds a way to break into the house, she relives a lot of her old childhood memories. When she walks up the stairwell, she nearly falls through the steps because they are so old and she remembers when she was a young girl being free to play with her friends outside and dress the scarecrow in the field. Even just spending time with her children is a pleasure that she cannot take for granted because the family is supposed to abide by certain meal times, bed times, etc. So when she gives her children their presents early and is playing a make-believe game with them late in the night, they even began to wonder if their mother is truly happy with her life because they start to see how she is really suffering from mental health issues and spends a lot of time withdrawing from people. Even just trying on her clothes is a huge liberty that the staff don’t allow her, and she tells them to back off and let her try her dresses on by herself but they don’t let her.
There is also a powerful scene where Diana is talking to a pheasant while sitting outside on the steps before she is called to dinner. She sees the men shooting the pheasants for sport and we can see the deep discomfort on her face as she sees them being killed. It’s as if she can feel their pain at not being free. Sure, they are birds and they have wings, but in the end they aren’t free because humans rob them of life by shooting them for sport. When she finally can’t take it anymore, she takes her sons away from the pheasant shooting grounds and takes them into the city for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fortunately she doesn’t have to go in the actual store, she can just drive up and give a different name (“Spencer”) so that no one knows it’s her ordering. This was pretty important to reflect on because you think about all the celebrities who can’t walk out of their houses to do every day things like get ice cream or go to the grocery store without photographers taking photos of them. I used to be really into Us Weekly and People and would read sections in the magazine like “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” and would be both wowed and humored. As I grew up though I started realizing that celebrities were just regular everyday people, it’s just that the work they do gains more publicity (although since the pandemic, the jobs that didn’t gain as much news, like working in hospitals and in food service, have gained more recognition than in the past since many people realized how much they depended on those services for survival, especially during a period of mass deaths in hospitals and quarantines). I think watching Actors on Actors helped me change this perspective on celebrity because the actors are just regular people having regular dialogues, and the bottom line I got from watching these interviews is that acting is a regular job for these people but they also have families, friends, hobbies and household chores just like everyone else. I think this especially helped when watching The Oscars because before I just viewed it as this glamorous thing, and I still am dazzled by the red carpet, don’t get me wrong, but what watching Actors on Actors taught me is that the acting work doesn’t stop once you get the Oscar, even if it is your big break in the industry. It’s just the beginning; at the end of the day, it’s a job so they still need to show up and do the work no matter how many awards they may win along the way.
After watching the film I read this chapter in the book Discussions on Youth by Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, and in the chapter “What is Freedom?” he talks about what freedom means from a Buddhist perspective. After reading the chapter it gave me a more profound perspective on what freedom is. There’s a really cool quote in the chapter that resonated with me: “…no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, our hearts can be free; we don’t have to let our spirits be shackled or confined. We need to have the strength to soar on inner wings of hope and freedom and never be defeated by anything.” (Daisaku Ikeda, p. 279, “What is Freedom?”, Discussions on Youth) I thought about this when looking back and thinking about the movie. Even though in the movie Diana was in a state of suffering because she had all these pressures from the outside, she broke through that suffering and was able to savor true joy. I thought about the scenes where she becomes free and then dances to her heart’s content in all of her gowns and when she runs through the fields savoring that freedom. Honestly that was probably one of the most touching scenes of the movie.
I also really loved the music in the film. It combines elements of jazz and classical, and after the film I listened to the soundtrack because it is so beautiful and has all these incredible unique sounds. Overall, this film was amazing and I definitely recommend it!
Spencer. 2021. 1 hr 57 m. Rated R for some language.
The Arts Are Life 