I am watching “Spencer” starring Kristen Stewart

Did you notice that all the people who claim that she captured Diana completely are Millennial Americans? Too young to even remember the real deal.

R1 I’m 35 and can tell you I don’t know what Diana they saw. There are many clips of her online to watch, they should watch. That’s for the critics too.

OMG what a hilarious scene! Thank you, OP!

I knew this was going to be shitshow, the same director made "Jackie", which is almost the same deal - terrible actress desperately trying to carry every single frame and failing.

The film plays like a psychological horror almost at times. It’s interesting but… bad.

And yet she appears to be the front-runner now for the best actress Oscar. Go figure.

She whispered through the whole movie, as though she didn't want us to hear her bad accent. It was awful, but as an upthread poster stated, so bad it's entertaining.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and got a little misty here and there. Kristen is very watchable; the outfits and interiors are gorgeous; the jazzy score is just right.

I'm watching it too. I am so fond of Sean Harris, who plays the head chef. But the hilariously ominous tone makes it seem like they're all about to attend a Black Mass and watch the Queen sacrifice a baby to Satan.

Timothy Spall keeps staring at Kristen Stewart with the most stupid expression on his face, like an egg is about to emerge from his mouth.

This stately home they're using looks absolutely nothing like Sandringham House (for one thing, Sandringham is not surrounded by a moat).

Everyone is always giving Diana evil looks but not saying anything, and she seems completely nuts.

R9 yes! I said upthread, the film comes off like a psychological horror. It Is almost like she is nuts and paranoid and envisioning all these looks and people and in fear for her life.

"Did you notice that all the people who claim that she captured Diana completely are Millennial Americans? Too young to even remember the real deal."

Millennials are 40, we remember Princess Diana. The people praising her are awards voters and critics many of whom are ancient

[quote] The people praising her are awards voters and critics many of whom are ancient

You mean, like 50?? Or even... *gasp*... [bold]60???[/bold]

R11 younger Millennials are in their mid 20s.

Some millennials are in their mid to late 20’s. The generation ends with 1996.

Yup r14, my sister was born in 96. 25 now. The youngest of the Millennials.

My sides.

r12, or 112 like you

"Now leave me. I wish to masturbate."

*pause*

"You can tell everyone I said that!"

CAMP.

CLASSIC.

Well, I see why it's been a flop, but I also see why Stewart is winning so many critics' awards. It's a brilliant performance, but the film is stark raving bonkers.

The whole thing could have bene done as a French & Saunders parody and they wouldn't have to change a thing.

Her performance isn’t Diana though. That’s the issue.

R3 Yeah you can’t call her lauded performance a fail, but nice try. And she IS a bad actress a lot of the time, sometimes oddly knocks it out of the park

R18 That's a real line? Lmao I have to see this film now!

She plays every scene the same. I don’t know how anyone can say that’s an achievement.

The script is a disaster, no matter who played Diana

Yes, but someone else could have played her a bit more like Diana. Her accent was atrocious, the ticks throughout, the way she walked, everything was wrong.

Is this the true art of cinema? As opposed to the marvel crap? God help us.

Am neutral about Stewart. Saw her in the Twilight Series (meh) and Charlie’s Angels (ugh), but she was okay in The Clouds of Sils Maria.

But in Spencer, I find her atrocious: nothing like Diana and full of odd tics, fake accent and bizarre body language. Thought it a complete fail and can’t understand where the Oscar talk comes from.....?

Diana haunted by the ghost of Anne Boleyn!!

...despite their stories having...nothing in common

Nothing captures emotion like an incredibly loud orchestral score

I don't care whether she looks or sounds like Diana (acting is more than just mimicry), but she's terrible in OP's scene. She's hamming it up ridiculously (though it's probably what the director wanted).

Datalounge.

The problem with all of the Diana films is that they only portray her as Martyr Victim Diana. The result is dull as dish water. There is a very entertaining film to be made about the real Diana. But it would have to include scenes of her stalking her married lovers, pushing her stepmother down the stairs and hanging Elton John's photo above her toilet and no one wants to go there.

I'm a millennial and actually met Princess Diana in person. And yes, her charisma was off the charts. The most charismatic person I have ever met. I'll never forget the way she looked at me. Tall and glamorous too.

I met Diana as well - a few times at work in Geneva. She was nothing like this film character of course.

WTF? The only thing missing in this shitfest is a Belgian bisexual vampire roaming the Palace corridors

[quote]Kristen Stewart plays every scene exactly the same, moping around, tears in her eyes looking like she’s about to burst into tears at any moment, looking around lost, looking around staring

Does she have the same acting coach as Jennifer Aniston?

There's this thing in perfumery where you get a perfume named Cello Beside A Swimming Pool On An Autumn Day and you expect it to smell like polished wood and chlorine and woodsmoke but instead it smells like something totally different because the perfumer is interpreting an emotion s/he associates with cellos besides swimming pools on autumn days and not those literal things. I wonder if that's what this film - including Kristen's performance - is.

Either way these scenes have made me want to see it because it looks kind of gloriously campy.

[quote]can’t understand where the Oscar talk comes from

From her PR team, R27.

Critics do seem genuinely enamored with Kristen Stewart though. That much is clear. I don't love or hate her acting personally.

R8

Aww, fellow Sean Harris fan. How was he?

Omg Timothy Spall lost so much weight. Good for him, but he looks so different.

LOVED dinner scene. It was so funny. I imagine the future scene of her shitting out those giant pearls with the same dramatic music.

[quote]I said upthread, the film comes off like a psychological horror. It Is almost like she is nuts and paranoid and envisioning all these looks and people and in fear for her life.

I didn't care for the movie myself. But I'm not sure the above qualifies as much of a criticism since that's very much what they set out to make. I sort of admired that approach, actually. It was brave. I just didn't think they pulled it off all that well.

WAIT...you have got to be kidding me OP? That was a Portlandia sketch--at best. Nuh-uh

[quote] Thought it a complete fail and can’t understand where the Oscar talk comes from.....?

I agree and I’m hoping the voters feel the same. And that also goes for Kidman.

The Anne Boleyn thing was dumb. It would have been a more fitting analogy to compare her to Mary Stuart, who was also someone who famously talked about leading by her heart instead of her head, and lost her head because of it.

I thought it was great madness…it felt like an adaptation of THE SHINING with a bit of David Lynch flavor….once I realized it had no attachment to reality, I just went along for the ride….considering that Stewart is onscreen almost 90% of the film, I thought she did a great job portraying someone possibly going crazy…whether it has a remote likeness to Diana is another issue but you know from the title credits that the story is a “fable” so anything is fair game to advance a story….

Also kinda sounds like the slow insanity revelation in Black Swan

I think the way they sold the film was not honest. People showed up expecting a biopic and were frustrated of course.

[quote]I imagine the future scene of her shitting out those giant pearls with the same dramatic music.

If anything, she'll throw them up. I'm sure the entire scene was supposed to represent her paranoia, social anxiety and depression as it manifested as an eating disorder.

R47 but it was done in a funny way

Kristen Stewart is the modern day Tippi Hedren. Dear god she's horrible in this film. Speak up, bitch.

I burst out laughing when she demands of the staff: “I need a pair of Wellingtons. And a torch.”

Just watched the video clip and it does look trippy; wasn't expecting that. Sidenote: when I realised that Diana probably had borderline personality disorder, a lot made sense - it explains how she was able to connect so deeply to people but also why she didn't fit into the formality of the Royal Family.

She can't act. She never could. Her only talent was as a mouth breather she could eat pussy for days to get a part.

Stewart walks like a stork.

[quote] I am so fond of Sean Harris,

So am I. He was the best thing about this farce and all he did was bark out ingredients.

Kristen Stewart only has one facial expression: confused with her mouth hanging open. I don't recall Princess Di having a similar facial expression.

Still looks better than watching Gaga's ugly face speak with a horrible Slavic accent in HOG

There is always a challenge when an actor portrays an icon, but I just can't buy Stewart as Diana. The whole film seems false because of her.

It’s a terrible movie with a terrible performance by a terrible actress. Audiences justifiably hate it, so I will never understand why critics were duped by both the movie and Stewart’s performance.

Both of the clips were the same as the trailer, Stewart mopes around without talking. Which means an accent fail, guaranteed!

It looks similar to the dreadful mess "Jackie", from the same director, but far worse. I have to see it someday!

I actually liked Jackie

Op, let me fix your quote for you: “Kristen Stewart plays every single PART OF LIFE exactly the same, moping around…”

"She was nothing like this film character of course."

Perhaps... because Diana was always playing a character in public (The Princess of Wales)?

How is this nominated for stuff? So boring and terrible.

It's not nominated for anything, yet. But Stewart's publicist is paid to talk up the idea.

The film isn’t nominated for much. She’s the main nominee. And she’s nominated for the Globe and Critics Choice so far, outside of winning most of the critics state awards

I am usually committed to films. This is one of the few films that I almost walked out of [bold] three [/bold] times.

It was that bad.

I haven’t almost left a film since watching Breaking The Waves many moons ago. (BTW was so horrifically depressing, it was difficult to watch.)

Spencer was just bad all around: bad acting, bad script, bad musical score, bad photography....bloody bad all around. And booooorrriiiinnnggggg.

Jackie was excellent because the director nailed what Jackie meant as a cultural symbol (the shot of her staring into the airplane mirror in her bloody suit was superb). But this film fails because he whiffed on what Diana was as an icon or as a person.

What was Stewart nominated for before this? I am told critics love her. What were her lauded performances? Or was that just PR?

Lot of metaphors in this film... fantasies and nightmares. If half of this was true, she was both very weak and very strong, simultaneously. I'm glad they left the movie on a high note. All I need is a miracle.

R69 high note? It portrayed her as a psychotic mess.

[quote]What was Stewart nominated for before this? I am told critics love her. What were her lauded performances? Or was that just PR

Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper.

And she gave the same dead performance in those as well.

I didn't hate Jackie but I was baffled at the critical acclaim it received, though I notice a lot of films get raves when they're on the preview and festival circuit, then crash when they hit theatrical release. A few years ago critics were raving about I, Daniel Blake at Cannes, then when it was released, crickets and tumbleweeds.

I genuinely liked Stewart in Personal Shopper and, to a lesser extent, Clouds of Sils Maria, but she was dull and lifeless in Still Alice, embarrassing in American Ultra and On the Road, and incredibly boring in Adventureland. Actually, in Adventureland, she reminded me a LOT of Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, they were both playing the thankless and underwritten girlfriend roles, but Aniston was much more lively and appealing.

I wish there was more THERE there with Stewart but it just feels like we've been waiting for her to finally fulfill the promise she showed a decade ago, and she never quite has. But critics seem to think she's one of the finest actresses around.

Krapstin tried so hard to do an imitation of Princess Di but failed miserably. Maybe she should have done an interpretation. She used her own tone, her speed of talking which were very infuriating.

Dreadfully dull movie and mediocre performnce.

Stewart's breathy, clipped impersonation of Diana and her accent is "decent," but there's a repetitive cadence to it that gets annoying after a while. It's like listening to a typewriter (yes, I'm old). Technically speaking, Stewart does the best work of her career, but that really isn't saying much for such a wooden actress.

Yet, she's probably going to win the Oscar. There aren't a lot of lead actress wins in recent past that would compare to this. Maybe Charlize Theron in Monster? Definitely not the same, but it's the closest thing I can come up with, unless someone can offer something more comparable.

Chastain will be lucky to nab a nomination. If she does, she'll knock out Kidman (who will also be lucky to get nominated). Colman has already won recently and her film needs to over-perform with The Academy if she has a chance of winning again and, right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. Cruz seems like a dark horse for a nod (Venice + LAFCA is a strong combo), but probably not a win without a Globe nod. Gaga seems well positioned for a nomination (NYFCC win + Globe nod in commercially "successful" film out of the contenders), despite the critics panning the movie. I think Gaga is the only one who can knock her out of the pole position, but that means the AMPAS deciding to give her an acting win after just giving her an Oscar for song. I wouldn't rule it out, but it seems likelier that Stewart will win. Weird. But, there it is.

Kristin is a one-note actress, the note being depressed. She did the same thing with Jean Seberg. Diana seems to have been bubbly and extroverted, in addition to her other problems. I guess younger generations are drawn to the whole "depressed victim" thing.

I wish they got the actress who played Diana in the Crown. That girl did an excellent job and looked liked Diana too…

Finally watched that clip at R4. Oh my god, it's hilarious. Beyond overwrought, and she's so SHORT!

[Quote] WTF? The only thing missing in this shitfest is a Belgian bisexual vampire roaming the Palace corridors

Glad i was lucky enough to drink my water before reading this 🤣

The clip at r4 is so bad it's gone past parody and instead looks like a movie written by a precocious 12-year-old girl. The pearls are symbolic so they gotta be HUGE! That ugly tri-corner hat needs to be a slightly different shade of yellow than the dress so it stands out, people might miss it otherwise!

Also, how crazy is Diana supposed to be in this movie, anyway? Anne Boleyn was never in Buckingham Palace, it wasn't built until 150 years after she died. Diana, regardless of her mental state, would have known that.

^^ Does it matter really? Anne Boleyn could roller skate on water in a few scenes and it wouldn't make a bit of difference in this mess.

I'm just trying to enjoy the thread and talk about the clips, r82. What's the point of going into a thread and telling people "does it matter?" If it doesn't matter to you, then move on with your life.

Those pearls were gigantic, but likely as a sign of the extraordinarily luxurious lifestyle she was leading. Real pearls that size are immensely rare and valuable. And they may have been another tie between Diana and the Anne Boleyn mirage, because they were a favorite of hers and her daughter.

(I hated this mess of a film but those pearls were gorgeous.)

That wasnt any different than what she did in the first twilight. Blank, far away stare, Im awkward, I dont belong here look.

The movie doesnt take place in Buckingham Palace, R81.

The dinner scene with the queen was surely at Buckingham, right r86? Where was the scene with her at the top of the stairs, Highgrove?

I am aware that Diana is supposed to relate to Boleyn, given how Boleyn was treated and ultimately dispatched, but the clips so far have shown Diana's most famous, recognizable moments (throwing herself down the stairs, the wedding) re-staged in a metaphorical and symbolic way. Some of the moments make sense, some of them don't, and I'm not convinced the Boleyn hallucinations make any sense at all.

Having Boleyn appear in a royal residence that is similar to but not quite where she would have visited in her lifetime just makes the whole thing feel like a mistake, or like laziness.

The Anne Boleyn thing was a tell that the filmmaker didn’t put much effort into researching the history here.

The entire film takes place at Sandringham.

I enjoyed the movie and thought it was touching. Stewart has a wonderful scene at the end where she stands up for her children and for herself. Her eyes were magnificent in that scene, she telegraphed all her emotions with power.

Kristen can't act convincingly as herself, much less a character in a movie related to a person who actually existed.

R90 does not know what the work "telegraphed" means.

Funny, since she actually used the telegraph in her early days.

She's always good in the hands of a good director. Kristen intrigues me. The most filmic actress working today.

convey (an intentional or unconscious message), especially with facial expression or body language. "a tiny movement of her arm telegraphed her intention to strike"

I believe your EYES are part of your FACIAL expressions. Or are you missing yours, R90?

How drunk or stoned would you have to be to think the film took place at Buckingham Palace.

Yes, central London, well known to have nothing around as far as the eye can see.

I can't wait for Jennifer Lawrence as Golda Meir!

And Lindsay Lohan as Eleanor Roosevelt!

It's not supposed to be Buckingham. Its supposed to be Sandringham which is in the country.

Excuse me, R89, but that is not true.

R97 I'm aware. Posters upthread mentioned BP, which is absurd. If you didn't know it was Sandringham, it's still clearly a country estate, not in the middle of London.

Not only did the house look absolutely nothing like Sandringham (which does not have a moat nor multiple wings), but they talk about Prince Albert's rules for the house, and it wasn't even built until well after he died.

All these Royal dramatisations are probably so far from how things actually were/are.

It's like with The Crown, these over the top emotionally dramatic scenes/confrontations, when anyone who's middle class (or above) English knows that we don't do that kind of thing. We just look awkward if a particular subject is broached, then someone says anything to divert attention away and everyone then chats about that instead, glad to get away from the awkward topic. I'm sure the Royals are the same. No deep and meaningful conversations just polite awkward and stilted conversation.

Diana superfans will not like this film because it focuses on her neuroses and mental instability.

R101 every upper class person is the same???

Anne Boleyn is a super-ghost and can haunt any royal residence she chooses.

Linda Blair would like a word.

R1 is another dumb elder-fag who doesn’t know the difference between a Millennial and Gen Z.

This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t know which is worse: this film or Diana: The Musical. What are these people smoking??!

R102 = the idiot who wrote this film.

Is she the one who’s now a dyke?

[quote] All these Royal dramatisations are probably so far from how things actually were/are.

Well, to be fair, this one is [italic]supposed[/italic] to be far from how things actually were. It's all supposed to be from Diana's POV while she's having some sort of paranoid mental breakdown.

r70 The high note was the (admittedly false) glimmer of hope - rejecting Charles, the fun she and her boys are having, the upbeat music.

R102 on the contrary, they love Sad Victim Diana.

Is Stewart slack-jawed as usual in this film?

R113 - yes, very much so. I guess she didn’t have a grandpa who would say “catching flies?” to her growing up.

My Diana movie would show her chattering endlessly on the phone. Many scenes of her planning outfits. It would have an early Warhol or John Waters flavor.

My mother (who had an attempt at the Diana haircut all through the 90s) used to spend at least 3 hours a night on the phone after dinner, every night. That’s how I picture Diana.

She should have done a Italian accent.

The scene of Diana sprinting through the grounds in a frenzy reminded me of this - in real life, Diana won the mother's race at William's school a couple of times.

Girl could run!

R118 she had legs for days and was most likely the youngest mother in his class

R118 That’s obviously what they were going for.

R93

[quote]every upper class person is the same???

No. Just like not 100% of Japanese people are more group-focused than individual-focused. But culture exists, and it can exist between classes as well. I would actually describe this emotional retardation as applicable to all classes of English society - it just gets focused on in the upper classes because this is the class that's portrayed in a lot of books, movies etc. read by non-English people.

Still, the scenes of the royal family sitting stiffly formal and not talking are just silly, a middle-class person's idea of what upper-class people are like.

In real life, I imagine the senior Royals are like any family, chatting about the children, complaining about their jobs, avoiding painful topics at dinner because they don't want to start fights, etc. And they wouldn't be stiffly formal, they'd be among the few who could do relaxed formal! The middle classes may be terrified by the sight of white tie and ten forks, but they could grab the correct 7th fork and eat heartily without even looking at down, while grousing about the dreadful oiks at the hospital they had to visit in front of the servants, or mutter that Diana's off her feed again.

Sorry, the *royals* could grab the correct fork out of 10 without even looking down, and complain about having to visit a hospital to earn their keep in front of servants who are working late on a holiday... without any self-consciousness.

Not sit there stiff and terrified.

OMG NOT ALL RICH PEOPLE ARE THE SAME. JESUS CHRIST R123 WHAT IS IT WITH STEREOTYPING EVERYONE?!

Yet when gays are stereotyped you all cry.

The scene was meant to reflect Diana's paranoia about them, not to portray reality in any way.

But that makes it a silly scene, R126. The best suspensefully ambiguous psychological-torture scenes can pass for reality.

[quote]Still, the scenes of the royal family sitting stiffly formal and not talking are just silly, a middle-class person's idea of what upper-class people are like.

I agree with this, although might say that this is a non-English person's idea of what upper class English people are like more than an English middle class person's idea (unless that middle class person has genuinely had no interactions with the upper classes).

But yes, that whole scene of the stiff, silent dinner punctuated only by OTT meaningful glances and a few tuts is very much not how the kind of emotional retardation I (and I think maybe you) are talking about plays out. In real life I would say that a majority of non-English people would be liable to perceive nothing (or very little) being off at all were they to attend such a dinner. My family is perfectly capable - skilled, even - at small talk and civil sounding conversation whilst secretly boiling with various hatreds/shames/embarrassments underneath it all and I have multiple relatives who I think would genuinely choose to jump into an active volcano before they deign to talk about - or even acknowledge the existence of - [insert uncomfortable and emotionally fraught topic].

Speaking of which, what films do a good job of this? The accurate portrayal of anglo emotional constipation, I mean?

(also, I hope I don't sound patronising about my own people - it can be darkly funny or it can be disturbing - not to mention a cause of real pain - but there is a pathos to this behaviour that I feel in my bones)

All this assumes Diana was some yokel. She grew up in a grand milieu. Granted she was very young and the royal life was more formal than what she was used to, but she was an aristocrat.

Bertolucci's masterpiece The Last Emperor shows how it's done.

R128, R123/124 here, and yes, I'm talking about that kind of polite emotional constipation, and how the clip above gets it all wrong. To make a believable psychological-torture scene out of that dinner, there should have been meaningful glances exchanged over polite conversation (in which Diana does not participate) and where she reads a sinister meaning into every innocuous phrase, fading into inaudibility as her fantasy takes over from reality.

But doing that would have meant someone had to write and direct dialogue, instead of relying on Stewart's open-mouth gasping to carry the scene. Eh, it's probably more fun this way, this thing sounds like a camp mess. I must stream it someday!

[quote] Speaking of which, what films do a good job of this? The accurate portrayal of anglo emotional constipation, I mean?

The Souvenir

R103 Yes.

I’m curious how she will fare at the BAFTAs. If the British themselves will award of her for this Diana portrayal, then almost certain the Oscar is hers.

[quote]Anne Boleyn is a super-ghost and can haunt any royal residence she chooses.

If this whole thing ends up turning into an Anne Boleyn super-ghost franchise then I will withdraw my complaints about the laziness of the Boleyn spectre-ghost-whatnot situation.

OP’s post is accurate about the movie in many details and yet I have a very different reaction to the film. I think it’s incredible and Stewart really works in the film—though I don’t think it’s an acting tour de force by any means. I also think criticizing this film’s lack of realism misses the point. It’s a fable and a tone piece.

Isn't it obvious that the Anne Boleyn thing is symbolic? I find it odd that someone is griping about her phantasy at 'Buckingham Palace'; that's literal an insistence given that she's a fricking ghost.

Phantasy? Literal an insistence?

You're incoherent, r137, and I already explained myself at r87. If you can't understand it, that's not my problem.

R138 I'm not incoherent. Phantasy is a literary spelling of fantasy. And you insisting that a symbolic phantasy/ghost/device can't be seen at 'Buckingham Palace' is dumb when we're talking about an interpretative piece of art here.

I already explicitly and clearly said that it was symbolic at r87, r139. You can keep saying that I think the Boleyn scenes are supposed to be realistic, but that's not what I said, and you can keep pretending like I didn't already acknowledge [bold] a day ago [/bold] that the scene wasn't in Buckingham Palace as I'd thought, but all you're doing is lying and wasting our time. I'm not interested in having a conversation with you which starts out with you completely inventing things I don't believe and then demanding I justify these things you made up.

Completely and entirely agree, r129. All the complaints about the formal dinners, the ghost, everything leads back to the same problem: that the movie treats Diana as though she were some commoner outsider who had no experience with British aristocracy, their behavior or norms.

R67 is right that Pablo Lorrain wanted to capture Diana as a cultural touchstone, but all he did was regurgitate well-known stories about her and then add in scenes of her paranoia which were represented by things that we, the general public, would imagine happening to US if we were in her situation. That's why it doesn't feel like it's about Diana at all. Maybe that was the intention, to make a film about how we perceived Diana and how unrealistic it was, but if so, I don't believe Lorrain pulled it off.

There is a slight * SPOILER * further, just FYI.

Diana would not have been frightened of a butler -- or any servant -- placing a book about Anne Boleyn on her side table. As r43 says, Boleyn isn't even the best comparison, but it's the easiest comparison for those who know next to nothing about the royal family. Diana would have known, however, and she also would have dealt with difficult servants before, or at the very least have seen her elder relatives deal with them. She's not the new Mrs. de Winter terrified of Mrs. Danvers, and it's not believable to make her that way, and saying that it's artistic license and fantasy doesn't excuse it.

Cheap British fake tourism is always putting a famous ghost in the wrong house. It's a joke when it happens. It's a joke here, too. Old British sitcoms have people sitting around nervously at dinner as their so-called betters stare them down. That's also a joke.

That's why so many of us are finding this movie so funny, but it was never meant to be.

R141 Anne Boleyn was an aristocrat herself. Her father was an earl.

The fact people like r141 thinks the same shit that happens to US doesn’t happen to the rich says all you need to know.

Theyre humans. They aren’t robots. They deal with more anxiety than we do.

Diana wasn’t born and raised rich.

I’ve said this before, but given this film I think the director could have made a much better version of this about Anne Boleyn and her era, or even Elizabeth I haunted by her mother, rather than the modern monarchy. Boleyn is a cultural icon of so many things in her own right

I think if you liked that Jackie movie (I didn't, same emphasis on stylized depression and melodrama), you'll like this. We live in a time of fascination with emotional trauma. Alas.

R143 Yes, before marrying Charles Diana worked as a dance instructor, then as a playgroup pre-school assistant. Kind of working class jobs, don't you think?

I loved Jackie (my favorite film of that year) and thought Spencer was a turd.

[quote]They deal with more anxiety than we do.

The rich don't have it worse than the rest of us, r143. That's absurd.

Like a lot of threads these days, people are quick to deliberately misinterpret what's been said, hoping that it will start a fight. I don't believe for a second that you truly think "presenting Diana as a variation on the new Mrs. de Winter" is the same as saying "the rich aren't human and are all robots," r143.

[quote] Diana wasn’t born and raised rich.

WHAT?!

That's the "Yet when gays are stereotyped you all cry" guy, r148. He's been saying that we're all mean gays for stereotyping the poor innocent rich folks for days now. Absolute pest.

R149 unfortunately I know of one too many impoverished or working-as-driving-instructors aristocrats..

Diana's humble childhood home:

R152 Yes but if you are not the eldest son, you won't inherit that. I do get what your point is though - there is still a lot of privilege in terms of the connections you can make, the culture and education you've had.. but look, a lot of aristocrats in the UK are dealing with very very much not necessarily inheriting wealth!

R153 Fine, but to say Diana "wasn't born and raised rich" is beyond ludicrous. She had a trust fund and her family had purchased her a nice apartment in London prior to her taking up with Charles. She came from a background of great wealth and was marking time with a "fun job" (no offense to nannies or nursery school teachers, but that's how her class would view it) until she eventually made a suitable marriage. She wasn't remotely just scraping by, except perhaps in a superficial way.

R154 How much was this trust fund?

R155 I don’t know, ask Lady C.

Loved Jackie, bored to tears by Spencer.

The awful yellow tricorne is too much. All it needed was an eye patch and a parrot.

I thought Jackie was great. This was awful.

[quote] Still, the scenes of the royal family sitting stiffly formal and not talking are just silly, a middle-class person's idea of what upper-class people are like.

Those scenes are paranoid hallucinations. That's why at that dinner she breaks her pearl necklace and eats the pearls that fall into the soup, but immediately in the next scene we see the necklace is still intact.

The movie is not supposed to be realistic. It's seen through the eyes of a woman who is having a breakdown.

[quote] I’ve said this before, but given this film I think the director could have made a much better version of this about Anne Boleyn and her era, or even Elizabeth I haunted by her mother, rather than the modern monarchy. Boleyn is a cultural icon of so many things in her own right

We really are suffering from a dearth of films and TV shows about Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I!

Diana's brother created this montage of childhood movies for the 2007 tribute concert. What do we think?

[quote]The dinner scene with the queen was surely at Buckingham, right r86?

WRONG

[quote]Where was the scene with her at the top of the stairs, Highgrove?

WRONG

Were you even paying attention at all while you watched this movie?

Here's another tip: none of it took place at the White House, either.

The entire movie takes place on or near the Sandringham estate, which is the Queen's private home, finished in the 1890s by the-then Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), in Norfolk. It has been the Christmas season home of the royal family since the time of his reign. The dinner scene in the movie takes place in Sandringham House.

The scene where Diana fantasizes throwing herself down the stairs takes place in her place of birth, Park House, the house on the Sandringham estate where she grew up when her father was the Viscount Althorp, and he was leased the home by the royal family. (When Diana's grandfather died when she was thirteen and Diana's father became the Earl Spencer, her family left Park House and moved to Althorp, the much larger country home of the Spencers in Northamptonshire.)

The appearances of Anne Boleyn were not of her ghost: they were hallucinations brought on by Diana's crumbling emotional state and by the book on Anne Boleyn Diana found in her bedroom at Sandringham.

You took all this time R163 to answer questions that were already answered several times over. Why did you make it that far and then just stop bothering?

Diana was born an aristocrat and raised in luxury, and would have been moderately familiar with the high degree of formality used by the royals upon her marriage, by the end of her marriage she'd have been more likely to be sick to death of formal dinners than to be intimidated by them! And sick of all her in-laws!

The dinner scene was a middle-class yahoo's fantasy of what dining with the royals would have been like, totally unlike anything the real woman might have experienced, and the fact that the director is ignoring reality promises enough laughs to make this worth a $3 stream some day soon.

Just watched. GOD but that was hilariously bad. OP is right about everything. Kristin Stewart’s performance is high-school-play caliber. Never once did I feel like I was watching Diana. The whole story is spectacularly pretentious and juvenile. I wouldn’t mind a dark surrealist approach but this was just silly. I’m so annoyed by it. It needs a laugh track.

Give the Diana story to Luca Guadagnino.

Caroline Bliss was the best Diana. At least her hair was right.

Is Robert Pattinson in this?

Does he take off his shirt?

Was there tension between them sexual or otherwise?

Can I ride in the Queen’s gold carriage to the premier?

I watched this and then last night, House of Gucci. Neither film was very good, but Gaga's performance leaves Kristen's in the dust. I had to remind myself I was watching Gaga, whereas I could never forget I was watching Stewart.

As I posted on the Oscars thread, 20 minutes max was all I could take of the GD WHISPERING! Stewart whispers every single utterance! And others in the scenes do, also!

Fuhgeddaboutit.

As someone said, it was like a schoolgirl's vision of Diana's story.

Naomi watts performance as Di was panned as well. They need to give up making Diana films.

R172 only Stewart’s performance is the opposite of panned.

The only reason Stewart's performance isn't universally panned, r173, is because most commentators are approaching her role not as her playing Diana but as her playing a crazy lady about to have a breakdown.

R174 that’s a lie.

Exactly r166, the idea that Diana - from a very old aristocratic family - wouldn't have understood all these upper-class formalities is nonsense. She even went to a Swiss finishing school to finesse her behaviour in such an environment. Being an upper-class hostess is what she was bred for.

Well, if anyone thinks that Kristen has captured the personality or spirit of Diana, r175, then they'd be very wrong.

R177 I agree but many seem to think that

I thought her performance was pretty good. (Although a bit too much of the eyes looking up over the brim of a hat.)

But the film was boring AF.

It really didn't bring anything interesting to the subject, except that Diana was probably BPD.

I wanted more interactions between her and the Queen.

Diana was my spirit animal.

I get "video is unavailable" when I click OP's links.

R181 it was taken down

I just watched this now the K-Stew got the Oscar nomination. I'd been on the fence since I thought there was no way she could pull this off. I didn't realize they were taking a Diana's Requiem for a Dream approach. Because she is so crazy and the approach is unique, I could see how this could be appreciated. She felt most like Diana when she was with the kids. Whoever said it had a vibe as if they were on the way to a black mass where the Queen was about to perform a sacrifice was dead on. Very bizarre film, but worth the 2.99 on Amazon.

Hi how r u?

Gaga's performance was far better IMO. Stewart always disappoints though. She has zero range.

It’s on Hulu now. I’m taking the whispering as being from all the bulimia, her throat is raw and sore and it’s as if language is leaving her as she’s crushed from the weight of all the pressure and strangled by the family.

R186 Uh-huh

Awful film. My teenager came in during the scene where she claws the pearls off her neck and then eats the ones that fall into her pea mush. (Did that really happen? Because the next day she loses them at her childhood home.). Teenager kept asking “What IS this? Is it a horror movie? This isn’t a horror movie?

And it was preposterous that the other characters rarely speak to anyone but Diana - with whom they have deep and heavily-weighted conversations with her.

It was lovely to look at, but fucking ridiculous.

Notice the only people praising Stewart's performance are young American critics who were all born AFTER Diana died.

That's the thing, r189. People keep saying "Stewart's performance is amazing" - but is she depicting Diana? The character she's playing seems to have nothing to do with Diana at all.

There were very few moments where she seemed even vaguely Diana-ish.

The scene at the beginning where she goes into the roadside stop was some of the worst acting I’ve seen in recent memory. I cannot BELIEVE how stupid this movie was. It’s so freezing cold in that drafty mansion and she’s lounging around in a little silk slip and strapless dresses? When she hurts her arm and seems puzzled by the wound, I was yelling at the TV “Don’t you have a little cashmere sweater you can throw on?” Is it warmer at Christmas time in England than I’m imagining? I thought it was the same as New York; and you can’t roll up your jeans and go casually wading around in the ocean in December here.

There are no scenes of any interactions with her good buddy Fergie?

Sorry, I know it’s annoying that I’m poking holes in this thing, but it was so ridiculous. Don’t get me started about the ghost.

It's not annoying, r191, please carry on.

The scenes near the end where she is dancing in a montage are so pretentious. I do think it's a fairly good performance by Stewart but as a film it misses so many marks.

I started watching this last night. How true is this supposed to be? It starts out more like a fairytale more than anything.

Wasn't Princess Diana related to some Stewarts in her family tree? I am convinced Kristen is her distant cousin. She really does resemble her quite well, but doesn't have her height or schnoz.

I’ll give it this: I’ve been thinking about the film since I saw it last night.

The thing was a disjointed series of Diana interacting with one person at a time. It really bothered me that they showed Fergie briefly, but there were no Diana/Fergie scenes. Surely they would have spent some time together, commiserating.

The most interesting scene was the one where William is trying to get her to come out of the bathroom. It was the only scene where I felt sympathy for one of the characters in this film b

Another question is that I hardly think Diana would have been so… okay… about her dresser confessing her being in love with Diana. She was all giggly and tra la la about that. Not the least bit uncomfortable, as most straight women would have been. She certainly wouldn’t have gallivanted on a freezing beach with her. She would have felt cagey and wanted to GTFO out of a situation where yet another person wanted something from her.

Oh, I also related to her wanting to see her former home. That made sense. But not traipsing around at night to do it. That was just stupid. Was she that stupid?

The movie is shockingly bad. She is awful in it. Haven’t seen her in a movie where she wasn’t offer. She’s the pouty girl from Twilight in everything.

The only good thing one can say about Stewart is she's OUT. I'd like to see successful highly regarded male actors come out as well. Stewart walks the red carpet round the world without issue. Why won't guys do this?

Dreck.

The music is good, though, in fact the only interesting thing about the entire film.

R194 at the very beginning the film calls itself “a fable” so it’s likely completely made up. It’s trying to show Diana’s internal feelings; sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Stewart did alright but her performance was inconsistent (my opinion.).

It kept me watching. It looked nice. The actor playing Charles and the one playing the head chef were very good.

I liked the music a lot.

Trying to be a Yiorgos Lanthimos and failing MISERABLY.

I agree with the others who said it was pretty to look at, and the music was interesting.

It is NOT Oscar-worthy in any way at all. Maybe production design, but even “Nightmare Alley” did that better.

I thought it was pretty bad. Shocked at the Oscar nomination.

Harry and Meghan (and Oprah) probably lobbied the Academy because the film portrays Diana as a victim - which she was, partly.

I am tired of the trope of beautiful, sad, compassionate rich woman. Part of the reason Emma Corrin from The Crown did a good job is because she showed different sides: Ambition, pride, how she lied to be approved by Prince Philip. That made a good show.

[quote]I am tired of the trope of beautiful, sad, compassionate rich woman.

Agreed, R204. And there's something that doesn't quite pass the smell test in the faction of the left that insists on leaping to the defense of aristocrats (as long as they are pretty and fit neatly into Minority Category X). Diana was a wildly privileged, wildly spoiled woman who 100% believed in the class system and her son's eventual rightful place at the very top of it. But she was pretty and sad and Camilla was old and ugly and that's all most people need to know.

I thought Stewart did a good job but the film itself was an absolute mess. I was baffled by the critical praise.

Just lock me in the food locker, throw away the key and let me stuff my face until I die happy.

I think everyone is thinking this a bio pic and are let down. Once I realized this was a Black Swan style, crazed hallucination version of Diana's internal paranoid hysteria, I thought it was OK. I think was K-Stews best performance. She's gay and there aren't any other actresses I am excited about for Best Actress Oscar so I'll root for her. She is certainly not the millennial Jodi Foster.

PS - Who was the last, completely out male Oscar nominee/winner for lead actor? Kevin Spacey?

K is in awful actress and was terribly miscast as lady d but she denied lady g a nom so I like her just for that

[quote] My teenager came in during the scene where she claws the pearls off her neck and then eats the ones that fall into her pea mush. (Did that really happen? Because the next day she loses them at her childhood home.).

Let me get this straight. There's a scene in the movie where Diana eats dinner at Sandringham with the entire royal family, including the Queen, where no one speaks even once, even when Diana's pearl necklace falls into her soup and she starts [italic]eating the pearls[/italic] from the soup bowl right in front of them.

And you're actually asking if this really happened.

R203 why would the Academy give a shit about their opinion?

It's not so much that Stewart is a bad actress (although she's given some bad performances), it's that she's not great. In most roles she's... fine. Perfectly adequate, but with a limited range and a very small cache of tics and expressions she relies on. Audiences are not impressed by her and every one of her movies flop. But her PR team keeps pushing these "greatest actress of her generation, in demand movie star" stories which are just laughable. And very annoying when combined with her fake as shit "I don't care" persona. It's a shame the Academy seems to have caved to the fake hype, but hopefully this nom will be it and she'll just keep churning out flops until her PR team has maxed out all their favors with critics and industry folks.

R211 - Diana actually tears the pearls off her neck at the dinner table, they fall into the soup and then she starts labeling them into her mouth sensually and then it flashes to her running to the bathroom with pearl necklace in tact. That's when I realized this was something totally different and was like WTF.

[quote]She whispered through the whole movie

I haven't read past R6 but wanted to agree with this comment. I started watching this on Hulu the other night but had to turn it off because of the whispering. I'd turn up the volume to hear Stewart but then have to turn it down when other people spoke or when music played, maybe I'll try again and listen with headphones.

It was so awful I gave up about halfway through. The movie doesn't bother to show us how Diana got to be so emotionally distressed that she needed to throw up all the time. Instead, it just expects us to relate and watch her endlessly throwing up. Well I didn't relate. She seemed like a hapless do-nothing victim, wallowing in despair and eating herself to death with melodramatic music playing in the background. That pearl eating scene was appalling, almost a parody. Not my thing at all. The motherhood scenes were also uncomfortable to watch in their fakeness. You could almost picture the director posing the "Harry" actor just so to cuddle with Diana. Gross. Stewart is not a good enough actress to overcome this dreadful script.

Lol! She’s not going to win the Oscar. I wish these voters would give up the Brit obsession though. Olivia Colman having 3 nominations in the past 5 years is annoying.

"Kristen Stewart plays every single scene exactly the same, moping around, tears in her eyes looking like she’s about to burst into tears at any moment, looking around lost, looking down staring, I mean, seriously. The entire film is her doing just that." That's what Diana did when she was a member of that family, The sanitizers and game changers and fact shifters don't want us to know how miserable she was and how she took every opportunity to show everybody in the family how miserable she was. The public face was her mask.

One of the stupider things is that the pearls kept scattering in her delusional fantasies.

Any string of pearls sold to Prince Charles would be knotted in between pearls, so as not to lose them all if the string breaks. Even mid-range pearls.

You're right, R218. I don't hate this movie as much as some (it is what it is, and doesn't appear to have been intended as any kind of true-to-life portrayal) but little details like that are distracting and lazy.

Robert Urich never had these problems when he played Spencer?

R220, he was “Spenser”.

Which must mean he wasn’t related to Anne Boleyn.

R221 Well my crazy aunt lost her head once, she packed her bags and waited outside by the road saying Robert Urich was coming to whisk her away to a new life in Las Vegas. They eventually had to get a 5150 and commit her to a psychiatric institution.

Does Stewart's sole facial expression - looking dazed with her mouth hanging open - get much play in this epic?

"Any string of pearls sold to Prince Charles would be knotted in between pearls,"

The real Diana would have known that, but apparently the writers and director don't.

I found the direction confusing. I know it’s meant to be her POV and show her level of depression (oppression), and the only light in her life were the kids. However, the film could also be seen through the POV of the family and staff who were witnesses to this woman losing her shit while abusing her own body. If it was meant to be scathing it failed. Kristen’s acting was predictable for her, but also, was it necessary to mimic the body language from the Bashir interview? It was a different setting, the subject matter was uncomfortable, and the world would never be the same for her after. It shouldn’t be the basis for a real person’s day to day mannerisms if you’re an actor. Anyway, watchable, but not good.

R225, oh that’s another point. I was bitching that we didn’t see her interact with the other Royals, like her partner in crime, Fergie. There was one brief scene with Charles and one with Elizabeth.

I remember reading that she would go to the kitchen and talk to the staff, which always struck me as very sad.

Was she sincere when she told the Queen she liked her Christmas Day broadcast dress? I couldn’t quite read the scene?

I thought that by the time of the divorce, Diana and Fergie had fallen out and were no longer "partners in crime".

What was the situation, BRF experts?

R223 you made me laugh.

You know, I didn’t realize it was a “fable” and it took a while to figure it all out. All of these people are absurd and over-the-top in real life, so it was difficult to tell.

^^ and they are wildly wealthy British people. They’re like extraterrestrials to this American.

Fergie pushed Diana to leave Charles. Fergie wanted them to leave 'as a team'. Fergie was anxious to annex Diana's popularity to herself.

I'm rooting for Penelope Cruz. Spenser is a JOKE.

I can't believe how many of you did not realize the multiple breakings of the pearl necklace, and the scene of eating the pearls at dinner, were not supposed to be taken as "real." They're hallucinations, just like the appearances of Anne Boleyn.

Okay I finally saw this last night. They were clearly going for 'edgy/artsy take on Diana'. I was surprised by how boldly they made her literally insane. She's clearly disturbed. The Royal Family is portrayed as stuffy and chilly, but victims of Diana's refusal to socialize with them and her intent on offending their family traditions. At one point my husband said, "Maybe Charles quietly underwrote funding for this mess". I could totally see that.

I get that it's supposed to be a portrayal of what might have been her mental state. She was helplessly "lost" on her way to the Royal castle (or whatever it is) for Christmas week. Supposedly in the same area she grew-up in AND the same estate where she's been going for Christmas over the previous ten years. How could she possibly be lost? So her being "lost" on the way there is supposed to symbolize her lostness.... I guess. There seems to have been no point in the whole thing. I was glad we didn't get yet another full-blown Hollywood-type biography. I think if the producers would have done a better job at framing the film as a sort of arthouse style interpretation, strictly fictionalized and meant as one film's interpretation of Diana during her final days, it would have been taken much more seriously and perhaps received more nominations. But they never qualified that. We all thought it was just another film about Diana with this tiresome waify emo lesbian doing a campy take on her, and that's pretty much how we all saw it. But I'm guessing it was meant to be taken with more thought by the viewer, like some impressionist painting of something we all know and have seen, but are simply looking at another artist's interpretation of it. The result was a silly movie. And sorry, I can't detect anything Oscar-worthy of Kristen Stewart that she received a nomination. Just not seeing it.

According to Kristen Stewart, Diana walked around with a perpetually broken neck sitting on one of her shoulders. Shoulders arched up, head tilted all the way to the left with eyes straining upward.... They could have told her to dial back on that a bit. Instead, she looks like an asshole doing that pose throughout the entire film.

I’m trying to watch this now on Hulu. Stewart isn’t TERRIBLE but it’s all just weird and boring. I think I’ll switch over to The gilded Age. It’s also fairly bad but at least it’s FUN watching those rich people.

Loving all the big brains in this thread who didn’t notice or didn’t process that the movie bills itself as a fable. Please spare me your analyses if you didn’t even read the brief.

R237, I don't care. Couldn't take her voice.

Moreover, a fable is, by definition, a moral tale. AKA, it is a story by which we are to derive a lesson.

What do you suppose the moral lesson of "Spencer" is, for the viewer?

That's right: There is none. IOW, the movie doesn't rise to its literary pretension.

Great get-out clause, r237. It's "a fable" so it can be any old crap they threw together - it doesn't have to have any basis in reality, be plausible or convincing, or have any point or purpose.

R237, shut up. It presented itself as realism. It took quite a while to realize what the director was up to (i.e., playing Lanthimos). I didn’t read any advance press that said this movie was some kind of absurdist fantasy. All I had read was PR bullshit that Stewart was just AMAZING.

The ridiculous parts, like the weigh-in and the foot-lockers full of delicacies were things that really happened, so some of the lesser absurdities seemed plausible.

It reminded me of “Napoleon Dynamite”, where each absurd thing could be true, but put all together, it’s just silliness. At least “Napoleon Dynamite” was funny and had a happy ending.

"Kristen Stewart is now an Oscar-nominated actor. ... the star landed an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her spot-on portrayal of Princess Diana..."

--Vanity Fair

"

'

R240 it presented itself as a fable, you incredible dumbass, literally before we saw an actor. Amazing.

So now we know what type of person thinks Kristen Stewart was "amazing" in this poop of a movie.

I'll say one thing for Kristen, she hasn't aged at all, not yet anyway. I was (before I bailed) watching a 2008 movie called "What Just Happened," where she plays Robert DeNiro's teenage daughter. She looks exactly the same. Terrible movie btw, tries to be a scathing Hollywood satire, but is so in-crowd that it's hard to care. It's got Sean Penn, Robyn Wright and Bruce Willis in it, cool kids of the past. Catherine Keener as well, she's good as always.

[quote]pushing her stepmother down the stairs

In fairness to Diana, everybody in Britain would've loved to have pushed Raine Spencer down the stairs. After Princess Margaret, she was the biggest cunt in the entire nation.

I gave up when she started talking to her father's old jacket.

R245 and then - in typical borderline fashion, when Diana had alienated all her friends and relations - Diana became BFFs with Raine.

[quote] I gave up when she started talking to her father's old jacket.

Wish I’d done that! Slogged through the pointless film, only to decide it was the most worthless movie I’ve seen in over 2 decades.

Stewart’s performance was just as bad.

My favorite scene is when she is outside the church at easter(?) and the photogs are snapping her in what appears to be mid seizure as she just shuffles her feet from side to side with her head flopping from upturned shoulder to upturned shoulder like a bladder on a stick.

[quote]Stewart’s performance was just as bad. But she's been nominated for an Oscar! You're not going to question the judgement of AMPAS, are you?