Spencer (2021)
Directed by Pablo Larraín
During her Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, Diana decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles.
6 connections found
View:
6 films that influenced Spencer
What critics say influenced Spencer
Watching it I was reminded of Rebecca (1940) and The Innocents (1961) in the way the location looms over the central character like a constant omen of dread.
The affectionate moments Diana shares with her adoring sons, Prince William (Jack Nielen) and Prince Harry (Freddie Spry), briefly take on spooky candlelit overtones of Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents.”
An unhappy marriage is also at the center of Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog , which earned its director a prize in Venice and also features a score by Greenwood—this one more than a bit reminiscent of his atonal accompaniment for There Will Be Blood.
Jonny Greenwood’s ("There Will Be Blood," "Phantom Thread") spiky, atonal jazz score perfectly captures Diana’s head space.
The music shudders with all the raw-nerves lyricism you’d expect from Jonny Greenwood (adding another remarkable score to an oeuvre that includes “There Will Be Blood” and “You Were Never Really Here”).
The emcee at the Heartland Film Festival screening introduced it as something more akin to “Black Swan,” if that gives you any sort of flavor.
If Larraín dipped his toe in gothic waters with “Jackie,” and its many scenes where Natalie Portman drifted through an empty White House like a ghost haunting her previous life, here he jumps all the way in, staging “Spencer” as a psychodrama swimming the same tides as “Repulsion,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” or “Black Swan.”
Of course she should suffer from “Black Swan”-like hallucinations while trapped with a bunch of royal ghouls for Christmas.
Woozy and dreamlike, floating for close-ups both intrusive and inquisitive, French cinematographer Claire Mathon (who worked with Céline Sciamma on Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Petite Maman ) does excellent work.
Mathon also has Petite Maman screening at the festival this year, while Greenwood has The Power of the Dog , making 2021 one of the most accomplished years for both these masterclass individuals (although Mathon has already experienced a similar year in 2019 with both Atlantics and Portrait of a Lady on Fire ).
Advertisement
For those of us who are fans of British filmmaker Edgar Wright—a hometown favorite in my neck of the woods for the Torontopian masterpiece Scott Pilgrim vs. the World —the hope was that Last Night in Soho would reverse the downward trajectory he’s been on since 2017’s enervating Baby Driver.
Durran has won two Oscars for her achievement in costume design for Little Women (2019) and Anna Karenina (2012).