Kristen Stewart delivers a searing central performance in Spencer

The memories of that Sunday morning still remain green in my mind. It was customary to begin the day with The BBC World Service, as it was known back then, to catch the headlines. On that particular day veteran newsman, Nick Gowing was almost overcome by emotion as he broke the tragic news to the world that Princess Diana was no more.

Few really knew her personally and yet the tragedy stuck a cord across the world to cause a wave of the morning. At times, this mass bereavement devolved into irrationality as depicted in Christopher Hitchen’s documentary imaginatively titled “The Mourning After.”

Perhaps the untimely passing of Marilyn Monroe or the Kennedy assassination caused such an impact across an entire people.

One can only imagine what the reaction would have been in the era of social media.

It is hard to believe that it has been almost 25 years since her unfortunate and untimely passing. Yet Diana continues to be almost like a contemporary figure of intrigue for authors, filmmakers, web series, and the media who still eagerly dig up ‘scoops’ about her. Many living and breathing celebrities don't get the coverage that she receives.

While she was a public figure and continues to be one of the most recognizable faces, she is, was, and will always remain an enigma. Few knew what was going on in that mind of hers. There were occasional glimpses during television interviews and subtle hints in her body language. But that was it.

The occurrences depicted in Spencer are an attempt by the makers to decode Diana. It is almost as we are seeing visuals of what Diana's mind was envisioning as lay on a couch in a semi-hypnotic state revealing it all to her therapist. It has the quality of a Freudian dream or perhaps a nightmare. 

This is a rare instance of psychological horror exploration in the tradition of Rebecca (1940), Gaslight (1944), and The Others (2001) that is masquerading as a biopic.

The film opens with a shot of a dead pheasant lying on a road as a military motorcade of trucks drives over it one after the other, with each passing truck the bird comes closer to being trampled. This is the first metaphor for the princess who almost feels like the living dead and is barely managing to keep it together owing to the many anachronistic and imposing Royal traditions.

The munition crates are unloaded off military trucks and are carried into the mansion, it seems like armed operation is about to commence. The crates are eventually revealed to contain meat and other ingredients for the meals of the day. This is another stark metaphor for the decadence of the Royals who are in fact parasites that feed of the helpless to facilitate their pomp and ostentatiousness retain their supremacy.

When we first see Diana, she has lost her way despite being familiar with the terrain, when she does discover her way to the imposing Sandringham estate it causes her to be more lost than before. 

There is also the scene that had Diana swallowing expensive pearls, that perfect allegory of her life as a royal. For the bystander, she had all the luxuries and fame in the world and her sole duties were to pose and wave. But for Diana, all the lavishness and excesses almost cause her to frantically gasp for breath and almost choke to death.

There is also the depiction of pheasants, these 'game birds' are bred only to function as targets during ritual countryside 'shooting games' of the royals. It was said that King George V shot over a thousand pheasants out of a total bag of 3,937 over a six-day period in December 1913. The occasional pheasant may dodge the royal bullet and fly away but it cannot escape its inevitable fate become roadkill, perhaps a metaphor for the life Diana was living.

There is an eerie silence all through the film, at one point the army of staff is warned by their supervisor to “Keep noise to a minimum. They can hear you.” He could have said, “Big Brother is watching you”. 

The portrayal of the sprawling Sandringham estate feels like a depiction of a totalitarian regime. Diana is almost like the sole dissident who is imprisoned, relentlessly surveilled, and has to conform in every matter including her choice of dress to wear. 

The palace courtiers who are there to serve her also double as the Gestapo always keeping the Fuhrer informed about her activities and movements. The rest of the Royals almost seem like zombies obediently following orders without much thought, even sipping their soup in harmony and in the most robotic fashion.

Yes, a lot of it may be unsubtle, but you have to commend the effort of attempting to tell the story through audio and visuals instead of choosing the easy route of a voiceover. This is exactly how cinema should always be.

This is a film that relies on its backdrop as much as its story and characters to drive the narrative.

Jonny Greenwood’s exquisite score switches between traditional grand royal fanfare into eerie almost cacophonous jazzy sections. Claire Mathon’s camerawork on 16mm and 35mm film swings like a pendulum between very steady shots of the imposing architecture and the vast fields of the estate to the frantic handheld angles used to depict the trapped princess. The grainy visuals remind one of the BBC documentaries of the 80s.

The editing by Sebastián Sepúlveda maintains the frantic pace of the narrative, it may be confounding but that is the state of the protagonist’s mind.

As paradoxical pre-title caption “A fable from a true tragedy” states, this may be in reality, but a great deal of what we see could be an overelaborate illusion that is the result of a tormented mind driven to paranoia. All that is depicted may not be factual, this is the world through the eyes of Diana. It is about her perceptions and senses.

This is a film that relies on its central character as the dynamo to drive it and Kristen Stewart rises to the challenge at each and every juncture.

Playing a character such as Diana that almost everybody has seen on TV and beyond was going to be an extraordinary challenge. 

The actor has to grasp all of the elements of her persona including the look, the body language to the manner of speaking. But it cannot be just a meticulous impression, that could either end up seeming like shallow mimicry or an unintentionally comedic caricature.

Kristen Stewart manages delivers a searing and tender interpretation of Diana.

She does retain Diana’s trademark gently tilted head with a famous smile that is an attempt to bury the melancholia that is evident in her eyes. She also conveys the hesitation and shyness that Diana had even when she was posing before the cameras. She also nails Diana’s manner of speaking i.e. soft upper-class speech that is delivered with frequent pauses.

But she digests all of this and disappears totally into her character. 

Stewart adroitly evokes the dichotomy of a princess in private and in public, and the toll such a tightrope exacts. Despite being trapped and helpless, Diana is a resourceful rebel that is depicted beautifully.

She depicts the deep attachment and warmth with her children and her almost inconsolable repressed rage that erupts like a volcano on rare occasions.

When film acting is delivered with such elan and with such proficiency one cannot help but marvel and wonder what went into the performance.

What an incredible feat it must have been to retain it all for such a prolonged period of time during the making of the film. This is a performance that almost has a meditative quality to it. The actor has managed to capture the essence of her character with such perfection that it doesn’t seem like acting.

Hopefully, she will dominate the award season, even if she doesn't she can look back at this as one of her great triumphs on the silver screen.

The auteur of this captivating opera Pablo Larraín has delivered a compelling exploration of the minds of one of the most well-known figures in history. What is admirable is that he has done so without being exploitative or judgemental. She is a victim of her situation. 

This is a film that is worth multiple viewings merely to grasp the many subtle nuances of Kristen Stewart's sterling performance and the copious subtexts and motif in the visuals.