I’m not in the royals and that whole kaboodle other than watching lots of documentaries about The War of the Roses and other historical documentaries, mainly because my wife controls the remote.
We watched Spencer, a snippet of three days of imagined life for Diana Spencer based on the reality of her life. It shows both the external and internal craziness of her situation. No one who lives the life she did, is coming from a stable place, and then the extreme external pressures certainly don’t help. The few fantasy scenes of Anne Boleyn might seem a bit much, but they actually fit in quite well.
The fact that Kristen Stewart only vaguely resembles the real subject wasn’t a factor. That’s the reason they’re called actors. They’re supposed to do the job of making you feel something for the characters they inhabit and she did an excellent job at that.
One intriguing aspect was that it suggested the Queen was aware of the problems and even, to an extent, empathized with Diana. More likely, she realized she had a big problem on her hand and would be happy to be rid of it. The tragic situation her sons are in, with the eldest having to be the determiner of how crazy she is acting, at her own request, is sad.
She lived in an invented world, thus an invented three-day fantasy captures the conundrum quite well. The ending is somewhat upbeat, but, of course, tainted by the reality we know comes later.
Worth watching
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