Film
REVIEW
SPENCER
More tattle than tribute
The latest in a long line of movies about Princess Diana merely reinforces all the worst criticisms levelled at her life
I may be a traitor to my millennial generation, but a Princess Diana obsessive I am not. Maybe it’s because I am a staunch republican when it comes to anything royal-related and I find their continued stranglehold over British culture nauseating. So as much as Diana is a tragic figure, whose life was taken far too soon and in abhorrent circumstances, she was still an upper-class part of an overprivileged institution that should have been abolished decades ago. Since her death in 1997, the continued media and cultural fixation on the woman has been disturbing to behold. There’s the endless stream of tell-all books from royal reporters and former staff and the constant tabloid reexamination of her relationship with Prince Charles. You’d think she was the first woman to ever enter into a marriage of convenience the way she’s been frequently painted as this innocent victim to Charles’ Machiavellian infidelity with Camilla Parker-Bowles. “There were three of us in this marriage,” Diana once said, but she knew that before ever walking down the aisle. She was fully aware that she was entering a nightmare, not a fairytale.
It’s certainly not surprising then that film and television have got in on the action of dramatising Diana’s tumultuous life. Since 1982, 12 – a 2013 biopic, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel with a screenplay adapted by Stephen Jeffreys from Kate Snell’s 2001 book, – was praised but the film overall was mauled for its dodgy script and soap opera direction. Emma Corrin won a Golden Globe for her performance in season four, though the royal family and friends were allegedly pretty upset at Prince Charles’ depiction, calling it “trolling on a Hollywood budget”. Netflix released a filmed Broadway performance of , an awkwardly superficial retelling of her story that leans heavily into the poor little rich girl heroine characterisation. Now we have Kristen Stewart donning the short blonde wig for a cinematic outing. But this latest film, , directed by Pablo Larraín and written by Steven Knight, had me wishing the world would just let the woman rest in peace.
