We as humans are fascinated by prominent personalities. We look up to them, follow them, criticize them, and sometimes idolize them like a God. As much as we can know about them through print and digital media, there are still many things we can never understand. That is why even when they pass away, we’re still finding new things — through their close colleagues, families, and the people they’ve worked with. And many times, these are the topics that become the main soul of biopics and literature. But one thing as an audience we have to understand is that many of these biographical films are not going to be historically accurate because the story told is always going to be from a point of view which is an amalgamation of accounts from several people. And as Pablo Larraín said in an interview with Deadline, “We’re dealing with something that we consider universal and we have limits. And once the story is inside the doors and they close the doors, all we have is fiction.”
Since its release, I’ve seen Spencer three times on the big screen. Not because I didn’t understand it, rather I was transfixed by it. It is a movie that couldn’t leave my mind. This wasn’t my first Pablo Larraín movie. Nor is it the first time he has mixed history and fiction to tell a story about a prominent figure. His first one was a Chilean movie, Neruda. Which is a biographical drama film about the poet Pablo Neruda set during the dramatic events of the brutal suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how he had to go on the run.
Before he made Jackie, Larraín had only made movies dominantly with male characters in the lead. So when he took on Jackie, which was not only his first woman-centric film but also a story about a woman who has been an iconic figure to many people all over the world, it kind of became a project where he could challenge himself as a filmmaker and open a new chapter in his filmography. And when you think of it, he was the perfect candidate to direct Jackie and Spencer. In the production booklet for Jackie, Natalie Portman said that while working with Larraín, “He didn’t have that sort of reverence that Americans have for the Kennedys. He was able to approach the film in a less orthodox way, and with intense, uninhibited feeling. He took the project in a completely unexpected and visionary direction.”
Usually, any Hollywood biopic takes us through the whole life of a character while keeping in mind the historical accuracy, which nowadays can be found on Wikipedia. Whereas, Larraín with Jackie and Spencer chose to focus on three to four days in the lives of these prominent women. Where Jackie Kennedy has to decide what legacy she wants to leave for her husband and whether or not to walk with his casket to the cathedral whereas Princess Diana has to decide if she wants to leave her marriage with Prince Charles while going through a crisis of hell. And the structure Larraín uses to tell these stories is like a fable engulfed in tragedy. Along with the burden of fame, demands of marriage, motherhood, and the phenomenal will required to self-generate decisions.
One thing Larraín understands is the limitations he has with his perspective. And this is where he relies on his actors to pull that inner turmoil of their characters and inhabit their perspective. Larraín becomes like an orchestra conductor where he knows which instruments should be played and when in order to create something larger than themselves. And this is the smartest thing a director can do along with letting their actors take control once the process of writing and creating a character is done. Larraín also said that once they start to film, the best instruction he can provide is silence and finding a way to help the actor in what they want to do. And you can see that on the screen because once you come out of watching Jackie and Spencer, the only thing you can think about is the breathtaking performances by Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart.
Both Stewart and Portman exhibit a similar elegance, sophistication, intelligence, and sensibility to Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy. And what they do exceptionally well while portraying these great women is keeping the character inside and creating that sense of mystery while going very deep. They exemplify the power of womanhood while honoring the delicacies and fragility. There is so much happening within Princess Diana as she struggles to be the person in the limits set by the royal family and her strained marriage. There is a scene where Charles tells her that there has to be two of her. The real one and the one they take pictures of and she has to be able to make her body do things she hates for the good of the country. Because the people don’t want them to be people.
Similarly in Jackie, we see the First Lady facing a remarkable series of challenges to fight and maintain control over how history would define her husband’s legacy. We see how even in this cathartic moment, the world around her rapidly moves with the preparation for the next President to move into the White House. At one point you expect each to scream their guts out. But Portman and Stewart hold it all back, containing the sorrow and the suffering within them in a way you can feel.
Helping Larraín capture these performances behind the camera are cinematographers Stéphane Fontaine for Jackie and Claire Mathon for Spencer. The flow of the camera along with the actors is just sublime. At times it feels like you’re following them like a silent spectator. Always there. Fontaine and Mathon enter into Jackie and Diana’s personal space while Larraín creates a fiction that offers a glimpse into what might have been Jackie’s and Diana’s emotional state in these moments no one else saw. Jackie stays in the elegance of dramatized tragedy while still being intimate with the past. Spencer steadily moves into the realm of a psychological terror tale with Diana being a bird caught in the cage.
From the surface, Jackie and Spencer have a lot of similarities. Both Jackie and Diana were fashion and pop culture icons, married to powerful men and families — and yet, they had their own individual identities. They had to deal with the media and judgment. But thematically the stories are different. Jackie is about memory, legacy, and grief whereas Spencer is about motherhood and reclaiming identity. Larraín captures these themes by keeping the story with a single point of view of the character. There is no audio-visual extravaganza, rather a simple and grounded approach where we follow the character in every moment and frame.
One thing Larraín does brilliantly in Spencer is using the pearl necklace as a reminder for Diana that she has to decide on her marriage. Throughout the movie we see Diana trying to rip the necklace from her neck. She even talks about the necklace with the maids and how she knows her husband gave the same necklace to Camilla Parker Bowles as a gift. During the dinner, Larraín captures the inner turbulence Diana is going through as the scene shifts into a dreamlike sequence where we see Diana crunching the pearls with her soup.
There is one other constant reminder in Spencer; is to keep noise to a minimum, they can hear you. Because everything Diana does or says becomes currency. The scene where Diana has a conversation with the Royal Head Chef Darren (Sean Harris) in the kitchen is a message about how everyone among the staff felt a great deal of empathy for her, how there was a great deal of warmth towards her, and the hope that she would be okay. And her relationship with Maggie (Sally Hawkins) and the trust she puts in her was one of the most important parts of the movie.
In Jackie we see her leaning on her brother-in-law Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), her best friend and White House Social Secretary Nancy (Greta Gerwig), and trying to pour out her feelings in confession with The Priest (John Hurt). But most of the time Jackie had herself to power through. But there is one moment in the movie where we see her in a total loss, sitting with grief, drinking wine, going through outfits, while Camelot plays in the background. And for a brief moment, she allows her tears to flow.
In almost every movie, there is one momentous occasion where the character makes that decision which leads them to the final resolution of their needs. Larraín carefully sets that scene while sprinkling bread crumbs throughout Jackie and Spencer. In Jackie, the crumbs are set up for the moment when she decides to have the procession and walk alone if necessary to the cathedral with the casket. Throughout the movie, we see how everyone is trying to keep her safe, out of sight. She is even asked to leave the place from the back to avoid the media but she decides to walk from the front to show what they did to her husband. To leave a legacy and tradition for her husband was dear to Jackie and she does that and along the way she leaves a legacy for herself too. She was queen without a throne. And Larraín, along with his screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, makes sure to present that with every fiber, frame, and word on the screen.
For Spencer, Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight link the theme of identity for Diana with her childhood home. Her walking inside the house is of utmost importance. Because she is broken, uncomfortable, and has to pull herself together. She is told that she can’t visit the house given it is in very dire shape and dangerous for her. But Diana keeps on it until the moment arrives where she takes the wire-cutters and makes her way inside. Larraín sets the scene up for Diana to get a glimpse of what once was and it is still isn’t too late for her to be that person again. A vision of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson), who was in a similar situation as Diana, gives her the courage to tear off the burden around her neck to set herself free to leave the royal family and the marriage.
Given how Jackie and Spencer are full of both existential terror and beauty, Larraín understands the importance of a stirring musical score to capture the mood woven that breaks the biopic mold. He mixes the score along with the film’s elements blending in synchrony to Portman’s and Stewart’s exhilarating performance at the center. For Jackie, Mica Levi’s score plays with a blend of instruments that have a certain feeling of vibrance along with drums, giving a military feel to some of it. But especially for Jackie, Levi uses strings to glide the turbulence Jackie goes through in her specific moments. Like when she returns to the White House, still in shock, in the same dress and tries to brush the bloodstains off.
For Spencer, Larraín gives the mantle to Jonny Greenwood to provide a baroque type of music which is very royal. The jazz part of the score is very internal to Diana. Like the scene after she rips the sewed curtain part and cuts herself in the bicep and gets overwhelmed with emotions after seeing Camilla at the church. She locks herself in the bathroom, hallucinates Maggie and asks her to stay with her. As moments later she breaks into her childhood home. And when the dance montage scene arrives, Greenwood unleashes the royalty of violins along with the jazz, building the moment where Diana arrives at her decision.
Every story ever told is fiction infused with reality. We create characters from imagination, fueled with scattered memories we gather along the way. Such is the case for biopics. While we might have all the information on paper or the internet, there are still many things we will never know. As Diana says to Maggie on the beach where they’re having an intimate conversation. On how they know that she has been cutting herself again to which Diana asks, how do they know? And Maggie answers, “They know everything.” But Diana tells her that, “They don’t.” Because what goes inside any human being is impossible to know. All we can do is interpret and that is what Larraín does. He takes the stories and builds them into a fable up to something very specific happening in a brief moment. And he does that brilliantly.
