Spencer (2021)

Spencer isn’t a royal biopic so much as a fever-dream character study, a film that turns a famous woman’s public mythology into something intimate, eerie, and strangely liberating. Pablo Larraín directs with a poet’s precision—every corridor feels like a trap, every tradition like a tightening knot—while the visuals and Jonny Greenwood’s unnerving, beautiful score make the whole weekend at Sandringham vibrate with dread and longing. At the center, Kristen Stewart gives a mesmerizing, finely tuned performance that captures Diana’s fragility and defiance without turning her into a saint or a tabloid headline. It’s intense and occasionally unsettling (including self-harm imagery and hunting violence), so it won’t be for viewers wanting a cozy prestige drama, but if you’re open to a haunting, atmospheric portrait of someone fighting to reclaim herself, it’s absolutely worth the trip.

Spencer is less a traditional royal biopic and more a psychological fable, using Diana’s Christmas at Sandringham as a pressure cooker to show what it feels like to be trapped inside an institution. Pablo Larraín leans hard into mood, symbolism, and surreal touches, which can be mesmerizing but also frustratingly abstract if you’re expecting clear history, tidy explanations, or a plot that moves like a conventional drama. Kristen Stewart is genuinely compelling and the film’s atmosphere is suffocating in an intentional, effective way, but the storytelling can feel uneven and occasionally self-conscious, like it’s trying so hard to be artful that it risks pushing you away. Also worth noting: the self-harm and hunting violence aren’t just background texture, so if you’re sensitive to that, this one may be more punishing than cathartic.