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Posted: |
Dec 12, 2021 - 10:13 AM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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I just watched “Spencer,” and frankly, I’m perplexed that this “fable from a true tragedy” (fancy words that sound better than "a lie”) has impressed so many critics. Diana’s fantasies/hallucinations are presented with sledgehammer obviousness that only a fifth grader could find profound (Anne Boleyn sitting at the dinner table, Di defiantly crunching down the pearls from her necklace like corn nuts, little girl Diana and adult Diana running desperately through a field). And for a film that purports to be a sympathetic portrayal of poor Diana, for the most part, she appears to be a lunatic that the royal family is somehow tolerating.
I’ve been impressed with some other Greenwood scores, and I appreciate that he paints in bold strokes, but I guess that also means if you don’t like it, you really don’t like it. In this case, I didn’t like it. It’s a dirge-heavy score that slathers the whole thing in thundering string-section doom, with an improvisatory jazz trumpet solo on top for good measure. It’s all in keeping with the film’s airless “look how miserable everything is!” approach, but it wasn’t for me.
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The music was extremely dull and nothing I haven't already heard the same or better in DEADWOOD, HOSTILES, HELL OR HIGH WATER, THE REVENANT, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD... basically any post-2000s Western movie.
Just generic "uneasy" dissonant ambience of solo cello and violin screeching with some agitated piano and guitar - truly the most obvious musical treatment for a film about internal conflicts of isolation set in the desolation of a western ranch landscape of 1925.
That said, it fits the "unease" of the characters, but again, you could copy and paste this into any film about unease in a Western setting.
The film itself was interesting and I appreciated that Campion didn't overexplain things and gave the film room to breathe. However in reading reviews, I find it interesting that nobody seems to mention some things about the plot:
The film very much was on track to presenting a redemption arc for Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch, while he inflicts psychological damage on others, doesn't directly cause harm to anyone and seems to be more a byproduct of his inner struggle with feeling shame about his homosexuality. His argument with Plemons about Dunst's alcoholism seemed to come from a place of caring and present a clear turning point for Plemons to help his wife who he himself had been neglecting and pressuring throughout the film and I think is far more culpable than Cumberbatch in his wife's descent into alcoholism. So in the end, when the son murders Cumberbatch, I kind of view the son as a villain and given his previously-established cold attitude by his late father and obsession with surgery that is off-putting to the younger housemaid, I feel like the film unintentionally is a tale about the beginnings of how the son becomes a psychopathic serial killer. No other review seems to mention this but I think he's the true villain of the film. The others were on their path to redemption and the son's inability to work with people instead of manipulating them seems to set the stage for a later tale about a psychopathic surgeon who goes on a serial killing rampage.
Interestingly enough this also plays into the old trope about the murderous/deviant homosexual, which was a mainstay of early 20th century cinema in films like PSYCHO and ROPE. I'd be curious what Campion's response would be if presented with these perspectives.
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