Kristen Stewart’s Spencer Movie Ending Explained

Kristen Stewart’s Spencer Movie Ending Explained. Look. Kristen Stewart just took home the Best Actress Oscar. This is fact. My wife and I were going to go see Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, but made the game day decision to go see Spencer instead, and I couldn’t be happier. Spencer was a tour de force and Stewart just absolutely crushed this role. Literally they feathered her locks, and said go. And dude, did she go. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this floored by a performance. And it hit me, leveled me with a palette of bricks, the very first time she opened her mouth. Her mannerisms, her eyes, her voice… the strong control, and yet quite low key aspect of this role… it literally was Diana. Maybe she was a vessel for Diana’s spirit? Can’t figure out a better way to explain it.

Kristen Stewart's Spencer Movie Ending Explained

Now. The movie might not be a fan favorite. Personally, I was blown away by the movie from beginning to end. But I’m guessing your average movie goer might not be… dunno. (Just checked RT and they have it at 50% audience score, and 84% among critics. And that aligns with what I guessed it would be. But man, the technical achievements this film crushed out of the park – gah.

The Brilliant Creators that Made Spencer

The crew that pulled this movie off are some of the best in the business. Pablo Larraín, the Director, created Jackie, and what a movie that was. Steven Knight, the screenplay writer wrote Locke, Taboo, and a pile of Peaky Blinders episodes. Claire Mathon, the cinematographer brought us the glorious Portrait of a Woman on Fire. Jonny Greenwood scored this movie and he also did the music for There Will Be Blood, You Were Never Really Here, and The Phantom Thread. There is a lot of quality in the pedigrees of this particular film. Lots of nuance, beauty, craft, and wisdom. We could do a lot to learn from this crew of movie makers. Just saying.

Spencer Movie Walkthrough Discussion

Five and a half years prior to Princess Diana’s death, Diana heads to the Queen’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk to celebrate the 1991 Christmas festivities with the family. Only glitch? At this point, Princess Diana’s marriage to Charles has become unbelievably strained as a result of his affair to Camilla Parker-Bowels I mean Bowles. At the estate, the staff kerfuffle their way here and there as they prepare for the celebrations. (I will say this, this movie mainly consists of Kristen Stewart as Diana, by herself, as she prepares to encounter the family… and then cuts to the aftermath of that encounter. We meet the occasional staff member. But generally speaking, this is 100% a Kristen Stewart film… wherein she frets, and stresses, and hallucinates about the chaos that is always happening at the periphery of this film.) On her way to Sandringham house, she makes a random stop to her old house next door where she grew up. Park House. Where she recovers a jacket off of a scarecrow that was her father’s. That hand grenade pin is now pulled… when will the grenade explode is anyone’s guess.

Diana heads in to a Christmas Eve reception, but she is generally ignored by the family. Her two boys are extraordinarily excited to see her, of course. But Diana’s only (potential) ally is her Royal Dresser Maggie. She tries to encourage her to fight back against the family, to stand up to them, and to go to war with them by attending the events and not being, or doing, what they expect her to do. One of my favorite scenes in the entire movie happens here as a hallucination, wherein she breaks a pearl necklace that Charles gave her… and then she eats her soup, as she crunches and eats the pearls that have fallen into her soup. Later, we are informed it was a hallucination when we see that the necklace is still whole, and well, sitting upon her neck. Throughout the rest of the movie we are heralded with hallucination after hallucination one after the other… so much so that we have to really pay attention to ascertain what actually happened, and what did not. One of the most long running hallucinations being visits from Anne Boleyn, which came from a book that was left on her bed about Anne, as a warning. (Anne Boleyn was executed because she had an affair… yeah, no. She was executed because the King had an affair and wanted a divorce. But alas, the church didn’t allow divorces. But the Church of England did allow the king to execute people. SOLVED! So listen here Missy Diana… don’t get too far out of line, or Charles will have you executed! Or not.)

A long running theme in this movie is that Diana is trying to flee. To run. But she cannot. At some points she is just trying to get to her old house, but whether its the staff, the police, or the guards, she just doesn’t seem to be able to get back to her old abode. (Location as metaphor. Think people… do i have to spell absolutely everything out for you?) Come Christmas, Diana goes to the Christmas service at St. Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham, where she collides with Camilla. Between Camilla and the paparazzi that assault her, it wasn’t such a successful outing. Later, in literally the only real or significant conversation that happens between Diana and the family, she talks with Charles about her distaste of having the boys pheasant hunt. She believes they don’t want to do it, and that also they aren’t ready. That it is dangerous, and unnecessary. The conversation swivels to Charles expectation that she slice herself into two lives. One for public consumption, and the other that is private. Diana calls him out on his affair, but Charles just rebuffs her.

Later that day, she bails out on the Christmas day dinner, and Diana gets a pair of wire cutters from one of the staff members. Why wire cutters? She needs them in order to get past the barbed wire keeping her from her old family house. Side comment, earlier she used the same wire cutters to cut her arm, which she apparently used to do regularly? Anyone know if there were confirmed reports of Diana being a cutter? Just did some casual research and it seems like Diana might have attempted suicide up to five different times? Regardless, she crosses the field, and heads to her old home. And while there, she hallucinates at a great clip. She remembers childhood memories. She remembers playing, and running free through the house. Climbing the stairs turned into a struggle for survival as the stairs attempted to swallow her whole, cracking, splitting… but when past them, they were just fine. On her way back down, she seriously considers throwing herself down the stairs (which, she apparently did on more than one occasion in real life. No?) Instead though, Boleyn intercedes, and stops her from killing herself. So, alternatively, she rips apart the pearl necklace.. you know, the one she ate with her soup in a previous scene? That one. She destroys it again. But I think, this time for real.

Then, on Boxing Day. To my American visitors, Boxing day was historically a day to give gifts to servants, and the poorer of the community. In a more modern day, while at school, we played football, and some went and swam in the bay. But I think most go shopping and give gifts? I will be clear, no one handed me a gift on Boxing day. But my grudges aside, the Royal family, apparently, spent the day shooting pheasant and making it a fairly festive picnic like party experience. But instead, Diana and Maggie (who was exiled out to London, and then brought back after Diana melted) head out to the shore to spend the day together. And its there that Maggie professes her love for Diana, and the two just laugh about the insanity of it all. It is a moment of rare levity for the princess.

Afterwards, Princess Diana arrives at the hunt, wearing her father’s jacket. The one that she took from the scarecrow at the beginning of the movie? That one? You know, the grenade missing the pin? Shotguns are firing. Pheasants are falling out of the sky. And here comes Diana, walking out into the middle of the shooting zone, and she let’s everyone know that the boys are coming with her. That she is not leaving this spot, until they allow her children to come with her. And eventually, Charles agrees… and they all head off together.

Kristen Stewart's Spencer Movie Ending Explained

Spencer Movie Ending Explained

Kristen Stewart’s Spencer Movie Ending Explained – because a lot of movie-goers are going to go into this movie and not get any of it. Now. From my own personal experience with this particular movie, the entirety of said entertainment was stress, interleaving, corkscrewing, stress. It’s as if the film makers were one, and only one end. And that was to help the movie watcher experience the psychic dissonance that was Diana’s day in, and day out, life. Her internal screaming at the cage, and the lack of ability to fly said cage. It was as if the culmination of the experience was to compound stress on top of stress with the end goal of heightening one moment… one crowning (pardon the pun) achievement. What moment would that be? The end. The moment when Diana, after three solid days, had punched her clock, had finished her obligations, and had ultimately, and finally, been set free. It was as if carbon, having been set upon by tectonic forces for longer than possibly imaginable, had finally been set free, and had lurched into the world as a diamond.

I mean that unironically.

The movie sets upon the viewer like a vice. It clamps on the watcher and doesn’t let go. It tightens its hold, and angles for ever better control, and angles of new pressures all for the end goal of making the watching experience even more difficult than the last. It’s as if some Carni came up with the “ride” of inserting carnival-goers into the grip of a massive 30-foot python – all with the purpose and intentionality and purpose of giving the rider the exultant feeling of the release that came at the end of the ride. Here is Diana, clamped hold of, by an all-powerful, ever-existing institution that doesn’t care one lick about her joy or happiness. It will soldier on, with or without her. And will grind her to a pulp without even noticing at the end of the day whether she was still standing or not. So in that moment, when Diana, nothing but a fluttering bird, finally declares her freedom, or respite, from this unthinking, uncaring, vice-like python, we watch as the bird wriggles her way free from the snake and barely flits free from the sharp fangs and out into the air… finally free, still alive, exulting in the change of events that have occurred.

Am I making any sense at all? The movie has the viewer in a vice. And after one hundred ten minutes, is suddenly set free. The exultation of the viewer matches that of the experience and feeling of Diana. It is a Gordian Knot. It seems forever, and unrelenting, and yet, suddenly, it ends. It has a finish. Diana is driving her Porsche, the boys with her, the top is down. What was that cacophony of stress back there behind us? I can’t remember. And just like that, suddenly, we have a metaphor. An analogy? A simile? I have no idea, a parable, that’s it. No. That is decidedly not it. We have an idea as to what ultimately killed Diana almost 25 years ago. An idea of how she would want to flee, to tell the driver to drive as fast as humanly possible (if she did…) so as to finally get away from them all once and for all.

So, for the slower individuals among us, the movie Spencer put us in Diana’s shoes. Gave us two hours of experiencing what it was like for her. The suicidal thoughts, the ideas of self harm, the inordinate strain that was pulling her brain apart, bit by bit. And when the movie ended, we, like Princess Diana, were psychically set free from the horrors that had been clamping down on us without momentary release. And as she flew from the estate, boys in tow, we knew real freedom, at least momentarily.

Edited by: CY

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