A Royal’s holiday duties

Since you, dear reader, likely aren’t royalty, you might think that the holidays are a time for simply unwinding, relaxing, and being yourself amongst your closest loved ones.

For royalty, however, holidays are orderly affairs of the strictest manner. Meals are orchestrated and scheduled at exact times. You must be on your best behavior always, smiling courteously in your already-chosen outfit for each event (and don’t even think about swapping your morning and afternoon attires).

Much like your entire life, it’s a performance. A wholly lifeless charade where enjoyment and self-expression have no place at the table.

These dignified traditions continue from one generation to the next, as the Royal family sees the highly fashionable acts as fulfilling a duty to their country.

But times change, and pressures grow. They certainly did for Princess Diana, a young woman at the center of the media sensation and the public’s fixation on the world’s largest stage.

How might the pressures of one’s highly scrutinized life reveal over a holiday gathering? What sort of psychological horrors would hide behind those castle’s looming doors and drape-drawn windows?

An impressionistically painted portrait

That is the question that Spencer asks. Director Pablo Larraín, having last showcased John F. Kennedy’s late wife in 2016’s Jackie, once again returns to examining the inner sadness of a stoic matriarch.

Related: ‘Neruda’ Review: Director Pablo Larraín Ends Year on a High Note with Poetic Biopic

This time around, though, Larraín (with a screenplay from Steven Knight) takes greater artistic liberties by inventing the events that happened over one holiday weekend.

Based on the factual accounting of a stay that Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) spent at home with her large Royal family, Spencer imagines the conversations, events, and episodes that the Princess of Wales may have secretly suffered.

While the events themselves might not have happened in the way they are depicted in the film, the impressionistic portrait makes for a different kind of honesty: one that’s more truthful of an emotional state versus events.

In taking such narrative liberties, Spencer is free to tread into dangerous, almost horrifically surprising grounds. Stuffy dinners aren’t just seen as uncomfortable, but as grotesque nightmares in which we are trapped, panic-stricken, and helpless. It’s beautiful, but also an unshakeable fever dream of anxious, paranoid proportions.

Kristen Stewart’s finest hour

And of course, the film holds together with a captivating and career-defining performance from Kristen Stewart.

Stewart might not be the first person you’d think of to play the late figure (perhaps because she’s only 31, and isn’t British). But when you look at Stewart’s career of playing anguished, grief-stricken women–along with her own history of being fixated upon by the media and public alike, the elements all come together. They make for an experience that feels spiritually connected (credit the costume and makeup department too, for masterfully capturing the look).

Stewart exudes a wide range of emotions: the tender grace in her lighter moments, as well as a heavier sense of hurt in darker moments. Spencer builds to hallucinatory anxiety, in which she spirals over her lack of control in her life. Of not owning your identity, and living life as a construction of others’ perceptions.

In Spencer (one of the best films of the year), Larraín and Stewart do something that I was reminded of after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, and what that did for the late actress Sharon Tate. By inventing a new story about a young woman who was also tragically taken from the world too soon, Spencer gives Diana her life back–at least in the public’s perception. A life that’s liberated from obligation and expectation. Here, she is able to live on her terms–duties be damned.

1h 57m. ‘Spencer’ is rated R for some language. Now playing in theaters everywhere.