Reviews and other things regarding 'Spencer'

I thought I would be able to add the following simply by editing the opening post to this thread, but unfortuantely, the character limit made it impossible for me to do so.

Anyway, what I wanted to add was the reason why Pablo Larrain cast Kristen to play Princess Diana in Spencer ...

However, the project really took off when Larrain secured interest from Stewart, whom the director had been tracking ever since he saw her eerie turn in Olivier Assayas' Personal Shopper, which deals with subjective perspective in similar ways. "There were many things she delivered that words cannot describe," Larrain said. "That's where Cinema starts to operate."
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Larrain produced most of the set photos himself, and said that there was one key moment after Stewart finished makeup and hair where he felt that she had fully become the character. "Once she was confident with the accent and all the sort of practical verbal issues, she became a poetic combination of herself and Diana," he said. "I don't know what most people see in Kristen, but I see someone who was able to find the physicality and style of the great actresses of '50s and '60s. We felt like we were looking at an old-school type of performance in the best possible way. We just couldn't stop admiring what she was doing."

Spencer currently has an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 25 reviews.

One of my favorite reviews so far has come from Variety's chief film critic Owen Gleiberman:

‘Spencer’ Review: Kristen Stewart Transforms in Pablo Larraín’s Masterly Princess Diana Movie https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/spencer-review-kristen-stewart-1235055104/

Here are some of my fave excerpts from his review:

And here’s the beauty part: Right off, we feel as if we’re seeing…Diana. The real thing. Kristen Stewart doesn’t just do an impersonation (though on the level of impersonation she’s superb). She transforms; she changes her aspect, her rhythm, her karma.

Mostly, though, what we see in Stewart’s Diana is a woman of homegrown elegance, with a luminosity that pours out of her, except that part of her is now driven to crush that radiance, because her life has become a wreck.

I thought “Jackie” was a knockout, and “Spencer,” which also finds its heroine living through a fateful moment of truth and transition, is every bit as good; it may be even better.

Skewing her arms up in the air, Diana demands that her sons stop hunting. And Stewart makes that the most moving moment I’ve seen in any film this year. Diana isn’t speaking as a royal. She’s speaking as a mother — as the woman she will now be.

Another one of my fave reviews was submitted by Pete Hammond of Deadline who showered Kristen and the film with high praise:

‘Spencer’ Venice Film Festival Review: Kristen Stewart Finds The Private Diana In Pablo Larrain’s Superb Royal Breakup Drama https://deadline.com/2021/09/spencer-venice-film-festival-review-kristen-stewart-finds-the-private-diana-in-pablo-larrains-superb-royal-breakup-drama-1234825978/

Larrain tackled Jackie Kennedy also through his own unique lens in Jackie which earned Natalie Portman an Oscar nomination, but Spencer is something else indeed, almost playing out in a conventional dramatic fashion, a more accessible approach in some ways, but also more ambitious as it is squarely from the point of view of its title character, purposely called Spencer to assure us that the person who once was, is well on the way to finding that very lost spirit again before it is too late.

I can’t say enough about Stewart’s performance, steering from an impression of an impossibly well-chronicled figure to beautifully achieving the essence of who she was. It is a bracing, bitter, moving, and altogether stunning turn, taking Diana down roads we have not seen played out quite like in this mesmerizing portrayal.

There has been an endless examination and fascination towards Diana. Lorrain and Stewart however have excavated her soul, and, in the end, presented what we should most want to remember.

David Rooney, another chief film critic at a major trade publication, The Hollywood Reporter, also had flattering things to say about Kristen's performance:

Kristen Stewart in Princess Diana Biopic ‘Spencer’: Film Review | Venice 2021

Billed as “a fable from a true tragedy,” this is a speculative study of a woman in extremis, played by an incandescent Kristen Stewart.

As such, it rests on Stewart’s shoulders and she commits to the film’s slightly bonkers excesses as much as to its moments of delicate illumination. The hair and makeup team has done a remarkable job at altering her appearance to fit the subject, even if this is a film in which the essence of the characters is given more weight than the actors’ resemblance to them. But Stewart’s finely detailed work on the accent and mannerisms is impeccable. The camera adores her, and she has seldom been more magnetic, or more heartbreakingly fragile.