Spencer (2021)

Director: Pablo Larrain

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Ultimately I’m starting to feel a little bit embarrassed about the sudden uptick in my interest in the royal family, but as this movie essentially takes place immediately after the fourth season of The Crown ends—and it was exceedingly well-reviewed—I just couldn’t resist.

Did I Like It: Two things raise this above other docudramas covering the House of Windsor, especially during its darkest days in the 1990s.

First, surprisingly, is the lead performance from Stewart. Harangued by a perception that she is merely a block of wood with star billing (when in truth, the material she had when obtaining that star billing really doesn’t hold up under even the slightest scrutiny) she uses this alleged weakness as a strength. The practiced stoicism of the Princess of Wales is harnessed precisely, but that only makes those moments where she begins to crack around the edges all the more impactful. That she is able to at all sell extended sequences where she hallucinates both the ghost of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) and that she is Boleyn herself. Also, she has chemistry to spare with the two young actors playing her sons (Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry), which is never an easy task. It’s truly a remarkable performance that plays with expectations perfectly.

And that zeal for her role as a mother which brings to mind the other singular, wrenching quality of the film. Everything ends with a rather rousing victory for the Princess, where she interupts a pheasant shoot which William is to take part in, and whisks her boys way from Sandringham holiday, for a remaining Christmas filled with pop music and fast food. Things are happy, and in the language of a movie, we’re meant to think this will be the dawn of a new day for Diana. Except, the audience knows that won’t be the case. Tragedy by implication is far more powerful than forcing us to reckon with the sadness at hand.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, in some weird haze that was 2008, I have a vague recollection of owning it on DVD, but then again I owned lots of stuff back then.

Did I Like It: It’s a difficult topic to approach. Burton’s output since the early 90s has been quite a bit off balance. For every Big Fish (2003) or Big Eyes (2014)* there have been an army of Dark Shadows (2012) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) to deal with. So I will go out on a limb and say that this is Burton’s best film since the turn of the century.

And yet, I don’t think I can say I would like it.

As to why, I think format may be working against Burton. He isn’t alone in making this mistake, but in the transfer from stage musical to musical film, some things get lost. The stage play is one of big booming melodrama, whereas here the proceedings are relegated to a tiny set and tinier frames. The big-budget musicals of yore like The Sound of Music (1965) traded in their bombast (or more appropriately, enhanced it) with a sweeping sense of the cinematic. Even an urban tale like West Side Story (1961) has more of a flourish than the dourness here.

The trappings of a movie hurt the story in more ways. Johnny Depp is (or, at least, was) a movie star, but he is not a singer, and the role of Todd really only has one job. Rickman—here stuck playing the thankless and truncated role of Judge Turpin—would have made a riveting Todd. Even Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Anthony Stewart Head** would have been transfixing here. But alas, neither are leading men at the degree needed to deliver a decent opening weekend. So we are stuck with Depp, smack dab in the middle of his “I don’t need to be an actor, I just need a really interesting wig” phase.

I’m relatively sure that phase is still ongoing, but it’s not like we’re all chomping at the bit to see Depp in pictures anymore.

As I type those paragraphs, it’s become clear that I don’t really like the film at all.

*Note to self, between those two examples and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Burton is to always be trusted with a film that has “big” in the title.

**Head in fact gets nothing more than a cameo. A baffling choice made all the more befuddling by the knowledge that a larger role for the actor must reside somewhere on a cutting room/hard drive.