Kristen Stewart Is Faster Than Me

I wrote this like six weeks ago when I saw Spencer and then never posted it oops

Today my mom and I saw Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, and we both thought it was great. It’s introduced as a fable, which, in my experience tend to be about animals and tend to lack wordless dance sequences representing freedom of self expression (amongst other things), but I take no issue with Pablo and Kristen cosplaying Aesop because it worked! 

Kristen Stewart is absolutely coming for her Oscar, and she deserves it! Spencer hinges entirely on her ability to transform into a woman trapped in the global spotlight, clinging to the things she holds dear while she loses control of everything else. She grasps at the straws of her personal past that have delivered her to a point where the past of an entire nation hangs over her head. She yearns for freedom but has become doomed to never experience it again in the way that she did as a child. Fittingly, then, the film is a nightmarish sequence that toggles between poles of claustrophobia and wide-open isolation. Most of its welcome spots of emotional levity include, get this, child actors, a group whose praises I almost never sing. It tangles early-Renaissance British Royal legend with early-1990s British Royal legend in unpredictable ways that are as often beautiful as they are repulsive, and food assumes the role of the enemy even more than the members of the Royal Family themselves. I liked it. I could continue for ages talking about it as a whole, but there’s one scene in particular that transformed my way of thinking in a manner that no film had ever achieved until today. 

While Diana dreams of freedom, she runs through the English countryside, first as a child, then as a slightly older child (please watch my new show Tween Diana on the CW), and then finally as her adult self in a smart yellow skirt and blazer. It’s moving, yes, but I also realized something that terrified me and shook me to my core: Kristen Stewart is faster than me. If she’s faster than me, which other celebrities are faster than me? 

Obviously I spend a good amount of my time thinking about celebrities. It’s why we have them. I talk about their projects all day long, I dissect their music and TV shows, I laugh when they behave in the undignified way of an older cousin on social media, but never before have I considered the fact that some of them could outrun me. It’s an unsettling thought. Perhaps it was just a trick of Claire Mathon’s gorgeous cinematography, but Kristen Stewart was flying. Just absolutely booking it. In a footrace, I would lose. If she was chasing me with a knife, I’d be dead. If a hyena was coming for both of us and only had room in its belly for one cagey white woman who can’t make eye contact, I would be its meal. It was a stunning cinematic moment in which I was woken up from a 22-year sleep of ignorance regarding the fact that celebrities have legs, as well as just careers. That sentence structure was loosely adapted from Little Women, and now I had to google “Saoirse Ronan running” to determine whether or not she’s a threat (she’s not). 

I’m not even fast. I’ve been told I look like I would be fast (because my legs are long, much like a certain spider named for that very quality), but the reality is that, in my softball career, I pretty much stopped running the bases for myself in favor of a courtesy runner by like eighth grade. I find running boring, and I’m not good at it. A lot of people run faster than me, so it’s not even like running is a point of pride for me. But the idea of celebrities running has tilted my world off its axis. I’m certain Timothée is faster than me. A race between Taylor Swift and me would probably be tight. Harry Styles would leave me in the dust, but I’d beat Lea Michele without breaking a sweat. Wow. Film can be so powerful. Never before had I considered any of these scenarios, and now, because of Kristen Stewart, they will be ever-present in my mind. 

Perhaps the film touts itself as a fable because it prompted me to stop and really think about the tortoise and the hare. If I can trick Kristen Stewart into taking a break and falling asleep during our inevitable footrace, then maybe I have a shot after all.