Steven Knight set aside traditional biopic structures to write a
cinematic snapshot that conjures Lady Diana Spencer as an innocent
princess longing to escape from her tower prison

Instead, Knight opted for a candid snapshot, “like a paparazzi — take a picture over a very limited period of days, in a single location, and just put the pressure on. Put the lid of the pressure cooker on and turn the heat up, and see what happens.” For one particular illustrious family, no get-together was ever hotter than the Christmas holidays during the early 1990s.

“I’m always interested in characters at a moment of decision, which is going to have consequences for their lives,” Knight says, alluding to his award-contending screenplays for “Locke,” “Eastern Promises” and “Dirty Pretty Things.” A wife’s decision to leave her husband, he felt, would allow him to detail stresses and conflicts likely to impel a bird in a gilded cage to fly away.

To shape what director Pablo Larraín would eventually call “the best script I’ve ever had in my hands,” Knight set aside familiar newspaper accounts and biographies in favor of primary sources. “I managed to get access to people who were there, and found out things that actually happened. Always, reality is way more bizarre than anything we could invent.”

There is considerable reality in the film’s settings, to be sure. Sandringham, one of the royal family’s private residences, really is located near the Spencer family home, “and that’s like a gift to a writer,” Knight says grinning. Though the real building has been turned over to charity, on-screen it’s boarded-up and desolate, a potent metaphor for a simpler existence that’s forever lost.

The script’s imaginative speculation on real events admitted fantasy elements, notably the ghostly presence of Anne Boleyn. The screenwriter notes that Boleyn “worked her way into the royal family with an absolute intention. She was anything but innocent … whereas Diana, I think, was innocent. When she entered that household, she had a desire to change things, but also an awareness of the long tradition of fairy tales. And every fairy tale is a horror story as well.”

Certainly, there’s constant menace in the air as Larraín glides up and down the empty corridors. We are never allowed to forget that the monarchy, in Knight’s words, “is as durable as Stonehenge.” Diana “wanted to make it human, and it was probably never going to work.”

Still, classic fantasy narratives always provide emotional release, and “Spencer” is no exception. Larraín and Knight leave us with something as unexpected as it is poignant — a reminder that the complex figure at the center of their story was, more than anything else, a loving mother.

Says Knight, “I want it to feel like a fairy story of the princess locked in the castle, and it’s very scary. But there’s a happy ending.” ✤

by: Bob Verini

To screenwriter Steven Knight, an excellent way to jump-start a script is to pose a question to which one doesn’t already know the answer. “Not really knowing where you’re going makes things much more interesting.”

The unanswered question of “Spencer” occurred to him a quarter century ago, during the world’s most famous funeral.

He remembers, “I saw and heard English people doing things that English people don’t normally do, or don’t ever do — which is sob and wail and express grief, openly, in public. And I thought, this is so strange, and even more strange because as I was watching, I was getting emotional! So, I thought, what is going on?”

One possible approach to that question, a conventional womb-to-tomb biopic, was immediately rejected. “You’re not writing it, it’s writing you,” Knight says. “You can’t dwell at any point, you’ve just got to bang out the sequences from beginning to middle to end.”

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Editor Sebastián Sepúlveda put the audience inside the story

Editor Sebastián Sepúlveda had to strike a delicate balance with “Spencer” — without calling attention to tonal shifts, he discreetly weaves together elements of psychological terror and a ghostly haunting into the film’s dramatic depiction of a three-day visit Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) makes to Sandringham, one of the royal family’s country estates.

“I tried to make a hypnotical flow,” says Sepúlveda, who previously collaborated with director Pablo Larraín on his limited series “Lisey’s Story” and the 2016 film “Jackie.”

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Editing the film as it was being shot proved to be a successful strategy for capturing exactly what director Pablo Larraín envisioned with his reimagining.

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In the opening sequence of cars arriving at Sandringham, Sepúlveda’s cutting was largely dictated by the precise selection of shots filmed by Larraín and cinematographer Claire Mathon. But once inside the claustrophobic royal milieu of the sprawling mansion, Larraín tended to alternate between normal and wide-angle lens shots, leaving Sepúlveda with a stark choice. For a key scene in which Diana and Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) argue bitterly while standing at opposite ends of a snooker table, Sepúlveda decided to only show the two separately, in wide-angle medium shots.

“If I had a change of lens, you might lose the flow,” Sepúlveda explains. “I stay only with those medium shots, because that way you’re inside the tale and you start to feel things.”

Sepúlveda edited the film as it was being shot, giving Larraín a rough cut of the scenes every day. Working together, they completed their first edit of the movie eight days after principal photography wrapped.

“Pablo is not the shy guy who sits at your side during the editing and doesn’t say anything,” says Sepúlveda of their collaboration. “He knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it.” ✤

by: Todd Longwell