November 7, 2021

"'Spencer' is, in many ways, baloney, abundantly spiced with slander. It is contemptuous of those whom it accuses..."

"... of treating Diana with contempt. Although [her confidante] Maggie says to her, 'Don’t see conspiracy everywhere,' the film sees nothing but. I can’t decide what made me laugh louder: the dead pheasant, stiffly positioned on the road at the entrance to Sandringham, like a prop from a Monty Python sketch, or the Prince of Wales informing his wife that 'you have to be able to make your body do things you hate.' He sounds like a Pilates instructor.... For all its follies, I would rather watch it again than sit through further episodes of 'The Crown.' The sight of that show clawing toward the credible, without ever quite getting there, is painful to behold, whereas [Spencer's director Pablo] Larraín is somehow freed by the liberties that he takes with historical facts.... [H]e tunes in to Diana’s high anxiety; the camera is constantly on her, with her, and around her, as if drunk on her perception of the world...."

Writes Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, reviewing the new movie "Spencer," about Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart. Here's a trailer for the movie.

18 comments:

Yancey Ward said...

Everything I ever saw from Princess Diana herself indicated to me that she was a perfectly ordinary human being- average in just about every dimension. I never once thought her life looked like a fairy tale, and after her death all I felt was pity- had she never married the worthless Prince Charles, she would be alive today with probably 4 or 5 perfectly ordinary children living perfectly ordinary lives.

rehajm said...

This…is an ex…pheasant!

rehajm said...

'you have to be able to make your body do things you hate.' He sounds like a Pilates instructor

I thought it sounded like a Democrat President.

Indigo Red said...

Diana Spencer? Isn't she dead yet?

Shane said...

It looks like a protracted Midol commercial.

doctrev said...

You know, if Prince William sued them for claiming that Kristen Stewart was capable of playing Diana, I think he'd have a strong case.

Joe Smith said...

So little time, so many things that I couldn't give a fuck about.

She was an airhead who wore Prada...

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks for the heads up about the hinky links. Fixed now.

Lurker21 said...

Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart

That sounds like a truly inspired casting choice.

And by "truly inspired" I mean foolish and lousy.

heyboom said...

The trailers I've seen make it seem as if Diana never had a happy moment in her entire life. Depressing.

Sally327 said...

I think Princess Diana is in the category of consequential people, someone who had a significant effect on the world when she was alive and still does to this day. She is the mother of the future British monarch, etc. Except that now she is moving towards myth, her story is no longer founded strictly on reality, if it ever was. People feel free to take liberties. Kind of like what Oliver Stone felt free to do with JFK the person when he made the movie of the same name.

Diana isn't going to be forgotten anytime soon. They're making movies about Anne Boleyn for heaven's sake and she's been dead for a long time. I do think it curious though, thinking back to the causes Diana championed when she was alive. People with AIDS, homelessness, landmines. I wonder if she'd find the BRF's current fixation on climate change to be as tedious as so many of the rest of us do.

Baceseras said...

Watched the trailer. Liked the corgis.

Earnest Prole said...

Note to an aspiring future Diana Spencer or Meghan Markle: If you don't want to work for a family business, don't marry into one.

Blair said...

"...had she never married the worthless Prince Charles, she would be alive today with probably 4 or 5 perfectly ordinary children living perfectly ordinary lives.

She was the daughter of an Earl and would have married into her class regardless. She would certainly not have lived an "ordinary" life by normal middle class standards. She would still have had servants and a country estate somewhere.

J Melcher said...

I was hoping for a movie adaptation of a Robert Parker novel...

Joe Smith said...

'She was the daughter of an Earl and would have married into her class regardless. She would certainly not have lived an "ordinary" life by normal middle class standards. She would still have had servants and a country estate somewhere.'

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting minor royalty.

The vast majority of titled people in England are unknown, even there...

Quaestor said...

They're making movies about Anne Boleyn for heaven's sake and she's been dead for a long time.

No wonder. They tend to make movies about interesting people who led consequential lives...

but not always.

People with AIDS, homelessness, landmines.

(You're missing the all-important verb, Sally327, but fret not, I'll do the job for you, a complimentary service of Quaestor's All-Night Rhetoric Repair Shop.)

People with AIDS, homelessness, landmines are popular causes of the idle rich who like nothing better than adulation without perspiration. Remember Diana Spencer listlessly droning into an off-camera boom mic, and then imagine Diana Spencer crawling on her belly along a jungle pathway probing for buried mines with a bayonet. The late princess did a little of the former and none of the latter. For the price of just one of her hats, Diana could have hired a poor Angolan peasant to clear landmines for a year. Were she to have eschewed just one pair of Italian designer pumps, Diana could have insured that same peasant's life and limb in case he fucked up.

Someone much smarter than me once wisely wrote, Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to do the dishes.

Lurker21 said...


I'm waiting for the Disney Princess version of Diana's story ...

Sometimes your "handsome prince" turns out to be a frog after all, and what happens then ...