Spencer

Misery. 

Misery on top of misery, on top of misery.

That’s what we are presented with for most of this flick. Princess Diana’s time as wife to Charles is coming to an end. A Christmas court takes place in a castle.

Diana is tortured and tormented by her own mind and by the family who wants her to live her life in the very strict parameters that a princess of Wales is allowed. 

In real life, it ends with divorce and Diana dating other people, living a life free from the royals, and then tragically dying in a car accident. 

But this movie suggests that Diana came very close to dying while in the tender care of her husband’s family. The movie plays somewhere between a psychological horror flick and an actual horror flick. 

Diana is haunted and not just by her own mind. The score is oppressive, the ideas are oppressive and if you feel bad through nearly all of it then the filmmakers have what they wanted. 

I gotta say I prefer The Crown or The Queen. Those present the royals as flawed human beings. This movie suggests that they are monsters on par with a Universal Horror flick or aliens unable to exist in a world of human beings. 

Anyway, I hated this claustrophobic, gothic thing and then I really liked it. It almost became bearable when the movie relents, just a bit, and suggests that Diana and the audience will make it. 

I am reminded of an old Jerry Clower joke.

Two men go hunting and one of them climbs a tree. While high in the tree the hunter is attacked by a wildcat. 

As the man in the tree struggles to fend off the beast and stay in the tree he calls down for the other hunter to shoot. 

The second hunter says he can’t shoot into the tree cause he might hit his friend and not the wildcat. 

The man in the tree replies, “shoot up here amongst us. Cause one of us has got to have some relief!”

One the one hand the ending doesn’t seem to fit with everything else the movie did in the preceding two hours.

On the other hand, after surviving this movie that little bit of sunshine at the end at least gave us some relief.