Kristen Stewart stars in Princess Diana fable 'Spencer'_00005502.png
Kristen Stewart stars in Princess Diana fable 'Spencer'
01:29 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She is morning editor at Katie Couric Media. She tweets @HolstaT. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

CNN  — 

Until “Spencer,” Emma Corrin’s portrayal in The Crown was arguably the best reimagining of Princess Diana to date. The eyes flickering under that canopy fringe, and her beautifully calibrated evolution from “mad tree” to the most beloved woman in the world felt note-perfect.

Holly Thomas

“The Crown” didn’t shy away from darkness. Diana’s bulimia, her loneliness, and in particular the disintegration of her marriage to Prince Charles were all examined in raw detail. But over the decade or so of so-called history covered by the fourth season of “The Crown,” the show’s portrait of Diana never became as intimate – or nightmarish – as the new movie “Spencer” managed to be in its depiction of Christmas Eve through Boxing Day at the start of the 1990s.

“Spencer” is a horror film, and it wants you to know it. Every image of Diana’s trek to the British royal family’s Christmas festivities at Sandringham Estate – from the decomposing pheasant on the road to the scarecrow in a field nearby (and the gigantic boarded-up house it belongs to), not to mention Diana’s futile stop to ask the locals for help finding her way and the eerie sign in the kitchen warning “they can hear you” – mark the journey as foreboding.

These are images redolent of “Psycho” or “The Shining.” If the young woman on screen were anyone else, in any other film, you’d be thinking “turn back, you idiot!” within the first few minutes. But of course, we already understand why Diana – here played with devastating potency by Kristen Stewart – has to keep going.

“Spencer” doesn’t attempt to explain Diana as a person, or to answer the question of whether she was truly extraordinary, or an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation. It doesn’t come to any definitive conclusions about the British monarchy. We aren’t even told definitively what year it is, though judging by the apparent ages of Princes William and Harry, it’s probably 1991, the year before Diana and Charles’ separation or thereabouts.

What “Spencer” does tell us is the inescapability of fate once you become a cog in the royal machine, and the loss of self in the name of becoming a symbol, would be enough to drive anyone mad. As Stewart has pointed out during interviews about the film, Diana was incredibly young when she “signed up” for royal life. She was just 19 when Charles proposed (he was 12 years her senior), an age when most people are far from fully-formed personalities, and still have a great deal of emotional growth ahead. And in such a situation, once you start losing yourself a little, without the emotional stability, or credibility of someone older, the scrutiny and whispers which would inevitably follow will only push you further into chaos.

Royal or not, anyone who is forced to develop in a suffocating environment is likely to object at some point, but when the status quo is against them, it’s easy for them to be written off as insane.

One of the many metaphors of “Spencer” is of Diana as an insect under a microscope. Diana describes “them” pulling at the insect’s wings and legs, declaring “what a fuss this one is making”. Her own minuteness – both literal and figurative – and the apparent futility of her attempts to resist the might of her keepers are emphasized from the moment her car turns into the drive at Sandringham. The camera pulls away to a bird’s eye view of her black vehicle moving up the enormous drive, spanned by moats and huge buildings, looking as tiny as a beetle on a path. This sense of scale – or rather, disproportion – underpins the whole film, and becomes the case in Diana’s defense.

A recurrent motif throughout the movie is all the royals’ silly Christmas rituals are just a “bit of fun.” So many microaggressions are written off in this way – weighing guests upon arrival, never turning the heating up in the freezing house – it’s easy to imagine how gaslit you’d feel if you made any objection. Everything is fine, because it is “just a bit of fun.” And though it’s easier to complain about the heating than it is about how miserable you are, if all you’re able to mention is heating, it’s easy for everyone to laugh you off as hysterical. A silly little woman – a silly insect – making a big fuss about nothing.

For the audience, much of Diana’s internal disarray is communicated through noise. Every sound in “Spencer” is either muted or grotesquely amplified, mirroring the focus of the princess’s attention. Human voices at mealtimes are indiscernible, but the rush of a toilet flushing and the taps running alongside after she’s rushed to throw up a course, are crisp and immediate.

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    Gravel crunches under the wheel of a royal motorcade pulling up to the house, and the string quartet shrieks from the corner of the dining room, but the man who follows Diana to the kitchen at night makes no sound while she rummages through the fridge. Nothing is moderate: as Diana repeatedly complains, nothing is just normal. But the idea that getting to the bathroom after eating would feel much more significant to her than listening to the conversation at supper feels incredibly believable.

    “Spencer” as a depiction of Diana is perhaps more overtly fantastical than others that have preceded it, but no less relatable for it. Stewart’s Diana isn’t a perfect human, and there are no shots of her walking through minefields, or embracing hospital patients. This story could occur at any point in history, and not even necessarily within a royal household. But it leaves no doubt if you put a person under a microscope, and force them to conform, they will start to unravel.