Of the many thoughts I had coming out of Spencer (2021), there was one that struck me as funny. No matter how I tried to shake it, the reasoning made sense. This was a quintessential Thanksgiving movie.
It doesn’t take much effort to find reasons against this. The film takes place over December 24-26, which is the most Christmas period in every calendar year. Decorations are everywhere. People open presents. More importantly, THE BRITISH MONARCHY DON’T CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING. Yes, this is all true. If taken hyper-literally, Spencer has no place around this conversation. And yet, there is something about the displacement of Princess Diana Spencer (Kristen Stewart) at a dinner table that feels more in line with The Fall’s lesser American holiday staple than Christmas. It could just be me, but stick around.
As I’ve gotten older even as my family continues to celebrate, there’s this cultural sense that Thanksgiving doesn’t matter. Within days of Halloween’s end, Mariah Carey took to Twitter to jokingly say that it was her season. Some have even reported decorations being sold in October. When turning on the TV, one will be greeted with The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade which sounds festively appropriate until you realize that the big attraction is Santa Claus. Half the table conversations are more about Black Friday and handing out gift lists. The holiday is still technically there and being celebrated, but so much of it feels like an inconsequential road bump to Christmas. In Southern California, KOST 103.5 is now weeks into playing their jingly soundtrack and Hallmark has pulled out the eggnog. Who even cares?
At their core, what separates the two holidays is their internal and external values. Christmas is a holiday of external generosity, where you’re overwhelmed with capitalism telling you to buy, buy, buy. Thanksgiving, as taught in schools, was always about the internal. You’re supposed to come out of it with the idea “What are you thankful for?” As a former courtesy clerk, I am aware most are thankful for turkeys and cornucopias, driven by food that fills everyone with comfort. There’s a reason that many joke that turkey makes you sleepy. In theory, the whole period should be about bringing out the best in humanity, but Thanksgiving feels like it was retroactively designed to get your affairs in order so you can nail that wish list.
As the most significant holiday between Halloween and Christmas, it feels more like a load-bearing holiday than anything competitive. There’s a reason that the main film people associate with it – Planes Trains and Automobiles (1987) – is more about traveling to see family and not some grand mythology story of snowmen and reindeer. The iconography is there, but as The Addams Family Values (1993) would suggest, maybe thinking too hard on America’s relationship with indigenous cultures will send it the way of Columbus Day.
Which brings me back to Spencer.
One of the first images that the audience sees is a series of cars arriving at a castle. This isn’t the grand entrance of Diana, but of her culinary staff pulling out crates of perfectly preserved food. As the keys unlock each container, there is something delectable about all of it. There is a militaristic order to everything. As anyone familiar with Thanksgiving gatherings will know, this room is the place where most of the action will take place. The kitchen is a place where those with good tastes take to make the meal. Depending on the efforts required, this could be a near day in advance, sticking the turkey in the oven and waiting for it to cook just right. Given that these chefs will be a central fixture in Diana’s journey, it’s easy to see it as a commentary on her troubling relationship with food.
In fact, the majority of scenes center in some way around either food or the side effects. Upon getting lost, Diana stops at a small diner to ask for directions. She takes another moment to run across a field and admire a scarecrow, itself reminiscent of a creature meant to protect harvests. When she finally pulls up to the castle, she isn’t immediately greeted by family but by another painful reminder of the days ahead. Major Gregory (Timothy Spall) encourages her to sit on a scale to calculate her weight. Going back to the days of Henry VIII, this was considered a fun game for the family to play where to gain three pounds would mean that you were happy. Diana refuses but has no choice but to give into her insecurity just to appease family.
Another thing that makes the film feel distinctly like Thanksgiving is the looming sadness. While I am aware that depression doesn’t have convenient timelines, I notice my personal seasonal affectation disorder (S.A.D.) was worse around Thanksgiving because of how pointless everything felt. With Christmas, there was room for music and anticipation of gifts. Thanksgiving was merely about hoping that turkey came out right and hoping the wine did the trick. Watching the film in 2021, I was reminded of my previous November where the influx of food overwhelmed me, making me self-aware of the weight I could put on. Along with being depressed, I stayed quiet and realized that I barely ate. The holiday in general suffers from food waste issues, but not even a normal amount put into context how much this was supposed to be about eating yourself into a coma, smiling through a conversation that nobody would recall in two days. Thanksgiving feels more miserable, especially when the cooks are less obsessed with “how are you” and instead “how’s the food?”
This is perfectly paralleled in an early dining scene. While director Pablo Larrain borrows heavily from Stanley Kubrick, there is something surreal about how he shoots the simple act of eating soup. There is uniformity to the wait staff, dropping the bowls in time. Diana is out of step, taking her time as she feels intimidated by Gregory to eat. There is a need to push past any personal grievances and just enjoy it. At this moment, there is a sense of dissociation where Diana rips her necklace off, a bead landing on her spoon. She chews on it, the crunching sound discomforting. Before the scene transitions, she’ll have purged what little she ate and prepare to endure the road ahead.
It's easy to understand why one of Diana’s biggest conflicts throughout the story is with food. Even her son following Christmas mass takes a moment to crack about how his meal was bad. Aside from the few moments she escapes to the kitchen to overindulge on food in private, free of judgment, she is seen getting into gowns; her costumes. She needs to feel relevant to a group who have their own regiments in place. Her children are being courted to go hunting against her wishes. She lacks any power here. All she has is a sense of history where she has no choice but to self-reflect on her past, whose apparent familial ties to Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth Berrington) cause her to reflect on the tragedies that lay ahead. What will her legacy be in this centuries old institution? Will she be Diana the Insane?
As much as this could be described as a Christmas movie, Diana feels far too removed from the holiday to fit it. One could argue that seeing Queen Elizabeth (Lore Stefanek) is more symbolic of the holiday, doing her regular broadcasts boosting morale, and taking family photos. Everything connected to her features an effort to suppress controversy, where the public only sees the happiness. They sew Diana’s shades shut, not wanting anyone to see her at a vulnerable moment. The world is surrounding her, caging her in. She must conform. When she becomes too numb, she self-harms in an effort to feel anything. Given that she’s lost weight and the dresses don’t fit, she feels like Thanksgiving incarnate. While everyone’s focused on the external, she is hung up on the internal.
While a lot of the story centers around food, Larrain takes a moment to create a side plot involving Diana’s youth. Behind a barbed wire fence is her old house. It’s decrepit, dark, dusty. With a flashlight in hand, she walks up the creaking stairs, being taken down memory lane as she recalls those childhood dreams. She is a ballerina, an intellectual, someone with so much aspiration and hope. The montage builds opposite Jonny Greenwood’s score, finding her eras crashing together as she walks through a field in her wedding dress. The house becomes like a tomb, full of ghosts. Even if this is designed as a physical state, Spencer treats it like an internal view of her soul, where the effort to find what matters to her is buried inside the floorboards.
In some respect, it’s the closest the viewer comes to understanding her disconnect from the Christmas festivities. This is the thing that lies in the dark recesses of her mind. It makes sense given that everyone but her maid Maggie (Sally Hawkins) has their own gated nature around her. They know how to assimilate. She is alone, needing company. In the rare moments of vulnerability, Diana is seen talking to Maggie at a desolate beach. It’s so empty that even the tide is out. Maggie reveals that she’s thankful to know Diana, suggesting that in all of these festivities they have experienced the heart of Thanksgiving, which is a sense of companionship.
It's the moment where things begin to be seen as having a hopeful ending. Diana finds a connection to others, accepting her place in history. She even thanks the chefs for their culinary gifts as she pulls her sons away from a hunting session so that they can go and enjoy Boxing Day her way. She sees beyond the artifice, finding nothing more enjoyable than driving down the countryside while blasting Mike + the Mechanics’ “All I Need is a Miracle.” This is the most she has smiled as everyone sings along, unsure of where things are going from here. The final scenes are of her ordering from K.F.C., using her birth surname as if accepting herself free of the royal family and the conflicts of a regimented Christmas celebration.
It's the type of happy ending that only people who know S.A.D. will fully appreciate. The final stretch of any year is full of certain expectations, where society demands everyone to feel a certain way. Following Halloween, it’s insurmountably dominated by Christmas that’s everywhere. The consumerism runs rampant, infecting other smaller holidays throughout the year. It becomes overwhelming having to please them, and it becomes difficult to recognize what you’re ultimately thankful for. In Spencer, the answers were always there, just a bit out of reach. If nothing else, this feels like a Thanksgiving movie for how inescapable it is as a holiday season. There’s still a month of activities to go, where you’ll reunite and do yet another major event. It’s exhausting and, in the right climates, feels blurry and melancholic.
I understand it’s difficult to fully defend Spencer as a Thanksgiving movie, but I have more attachment to food and November. Given that it started as a celebration of the harvest, it makes sense that this film is so obsessed with a full stomach. Then again, when students are taught to focus on what they’re thankful for, there’s a need for a full soul as well, which can often be absent when dealing with family that does nothing but drive you into isolation, feeling like the day will never end. Maybe your family isn’t as conflicting as Spencer’s take on The Royal Family, but there are traces of putting up with food, faking a smile, and waiting for New Year’s to finally come so that this will all be over. It all feels too long and puts you in corners that you don’t want to be in. Christmas at least has presents. Thanksgiving has you waiting on the chefs all day. As a movie about food and family, Spencer knows the holidays better than most. Even if you don’t watch it in November during a holiday that can’t be respected with its own set-in-stone date, I’m sure there will be another time where Spencer just feels right. Few films hit that very specific sensation quite like this, and for me it’s something I feel during a Thanksgiving morning when you’ve heard Mariah Carey seven times too many before you’ve even cut into the turkey, hoping it isn’t too dry.
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