Larraín Found New Power by Listening
The director discovered an intimate new approach on “Spencer,” from his work with star Kristen Stewart to the way he directed key scenes
Having distinguished himself as a fearless artist who thrives in unfamiliar territory, Chilean director Pablo Larraín offers his latest, “Spencer,” an intimate, imaginative account of a formative weekend in the life of Princess Diana.
Dispensing with the historical record to imagine what happens behind closed doors, “Spencer” flips the traditional biopic inside out, restoring fragility and vulnerability to a woman who represented an image of perfection. And, as with his 2016 film “Jackie” about the celebrated first lady, Larraín explores the distance between the visibility of these media-savvy icons and their ultimate unknowability.
“There’s so much that has been said about her, and countless books and movies and TV shows,” Larraín says. “But in my case, the more I research, the less I know about her. There’s an incredible element of mystery. And that is wonderful for cinema. I feel comfortable in that place.”
by: James Linhardt
In every new film, Larraín says he usually considers how tone and mood will shape the story he’s trying to tell. With “Spencer,” it was even more crucial, since the undercurrent of emotions shifts and evolves alongside Princess Diana.
Pablo Larraín shooting Kristen Stewart in "Spencer.”
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“Every decision was made in order to have an emotional connection with the characters,” he says. “And maybe that’s why this is the warmest movie I’ve made.”
Larraín’s definition of warmth defies the traditional: “Spencer” includes unsettling hallucinatory sequences involving the ghost of Anne Boleyn and a dinner made of pearls — surrealist risks he took, offering a rejoinder to the insular, tabloid perspective on Diana.
Producer Paul Webster says, “Quite simply, I think he’s one of the best directors in the world. And I think what was intriguing was this outsider’s view. We have a lot of baggage around Diana in the U.K., and Pablo came to it clean of that and just looked at that story for what it was.”
Larraín was pleasantly surprised when early reviews of “Spencer” called attention to the film’s visual splendor.
“Maybe it’s because once you stop paying attention to certain things, they come out more organically,” Larraín notes.
As a director, he is interested in engaging all the senses, and constantly focused on “movement and perception of speed,” paying careful attention to the ways Kristen Stewart’s Diana navigates her gilded prison. At times, the cinematography generates a sense of claustrophobia, but when Diana roams the countryside in her sports car, “Spencer” is all speed and open space.
Larraín is also attuned to bodily movement. “Spencer” includes a striking dance montage, and Larraín says he filmed the dance with Stewart nearly every day of the shoot for this centerpiece scene. “In the structure of the film, it has a very important role, because there’s so much pressure on the character and then when that part comes in, it decompresses and unleashes what’s coming next in the narrative. But it [also] helped us to understand the movie that we were making and our take on the character — that dance worked as a therapy for us.”
Says Stewart, “Every time [Larraín] started talking about [Diana], she felt like someone he was protecting within his own family. It just felt so considered and so personal. There are a million things that the movie deals with, like invasive media, whether or not the monarchy should be something that we revere. All of that aside, what made me know that he was actually going to do something really truthful was just how intimately he was approaching it. It was like you forgot we were talking about Diana.”
Earlier Larraín period pieces like “Tony Manero,” “Post Mortem” and “No” deal explicitly with the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; despite his remove from British politics, the director sees “Spencer” as a political drama of a different sort.
“Cinema is always political,” Larraín says. “As soon as you describe a human context, any sort of description of society, it becomes a political idea. Diana went through a huge crisis because she was told what to do. And she was told where to be. And she was told who to be, up until she decided not to be that person anymore. And that’s obviously a political statement.”
Rather than make a traditional biopic or docudrama, director Pablo Larraín chose to take viewers inside the mind of Princess Diana at a pivotal moment.
Like the evolving tone and mood of the film, Larraín himself is an artist in constant evolution. During the filming of a climactic scene between Stewart and Sally Hawkins, who plays Diana’s royal dresser and best friend, Larraín — so used to exercising his vision in all aspects of filmmaking — realized he had no instruction to give the actors. At first, he was concerned, but upon reflection realized he was exercising a new skill.
“I wish I would’ve learned it earlier, but sometimes directing is understanding when to be quiet. It’s about being sensitive enough to capture things that are happening in front of you, and [recognizing] that you’re not necessarily there to control them. I controlled everything for two years to get to that scene, that moment. Right then, I knew that my job in that scene was to let them connect and bring everything they had to the interaction and just let it happen. And it was wonderful.” ✤
Larraín worked with composer Jonny Greenwood, whose score shifts from baroque classical — reflecting the character’s heightened stress — to free jazz when Diana is alone on-screen.
For screenwriter Steven Knight, the fluidity of Larraín’s camera was a revelation. “The way the film is shot and the way it moves is so intimate with the central character. Even though you are looking at her, you feel you are looking from within her.”
In these ways, “Spencer” plays more like an intimate psychological drama than a historical epic, something Larraín refers to as an “upside-down fairy tale.” By design, the filmmakers made no attempt to re-create Diana’s wardrobe, persona or affect in an exacting way. Though rooted in history, “Spencer” could never be mistaken for a biopic. The filmmaker’s affinity for Princess Diana is entirely human-scaled, inspired by Larraín’s own mother’s fascination with the icon. With that relationship as an origin point, the film is more interested in the stakes of motherhood than monarchy.
“
(The dance montage) helped us to understand the movie and our
take on the character — that dance worked as a therapy for us. ”
—Pablo Larraín
