Review of Spencer (2021) by Theredsky — 23 Nov 2021

A film that breaks the conventions of a biopic by taking a real person and placing them in a real life event while being abstract and looking at how the person thought instead of how the people around her felt.

It’s everything I wanted it to be and more. I have to say that Kristen Stewart’s performance as Princess Diana is absolutely amazing. It’s my favorite performance of the year so far and absolutely deserves the Oscar for Best Actress next year.

Stewart is unrecognizable here and I loved that. All of the other performances were great as well especially from Timothy Spall and Sally Hawkins. The costumes are on point here. Each of them helps contribute to Diana’s mood and tone of the overall scene which was amazing.

The costumes help us understand Diana’s mood and what she is thinking without directly telling us. The direction, cinematography, and writing are all amazing as well. Pablo Larraín does an amazing job at showing and not telling us Diana’s mood unless it was absolutely necessary and his style contributes greatly to the final product.

The writing does a fantastic job at showing us someone who is crumbling under the weight of being a member of the Royal family and feeling the need to just run. The cinematography looks stellar here. It looks like a film that came straight out of the 1990s in a good way.

The music has a jazzy feel to it which helps us show the impulsiveness of Diana in this film. I also loved how we get almost dream sequences here where we see how Diana is feeling and what she wants to do.

Those scenes feel very uncomfortable at points and it works beautifully. All of these qualities come together beautifully to show us the inside of Diana Spencer. Please go check this out when you can but know it’s a much more different kind of biopic.