With this analysis, I'm going to riff off an anecdote associated with filmmaker Joel Coen: "All…

With this analysis, I'm going to riff off an anecdote associated with filmmaker Joel Coen: "All movies are an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz." Whether Coen actually said this or not, I find a lot of truth in the sentiment. At the very least, it provides an interesting prism to use to analyze cinematic stories.

Case in point: Spencer. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy begins at home (Kansas), departs to Oz, then returns home (Kansas). By story's end, she has determined that the place she did not feel to be a home at the beginning of the movie is actually where she belongs ("There's no place like home").

By contrast, the Protagonist in Spencer (Diana) arrives "home" (Sandringham / royal court), grows in her loathing for this place and these peoploe, then departs "home" to end up at at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, symbolic of her desire for a "home" which reflects normality. Indeed, we may take Dorothy's assertion -- "There's no place like home" -- and apply that to Diana where it takes on an entirely new meaning: There is no place like home. She's not a royal. She's not a commoner. She's not marriaed. She's not divorced. The closest thing she has to being "home" is to be a mother to her sons, William and Harry, who she is seen with (at KFC) in the movie's denouement.

The entire structure of the story plays to this arc: Diana's increasing disconnect to royal life, eventually embracing her desire to be free of it, setting off on her own.

Over the course of Act Two, there are parallel storylines which drive home her need to leave. One storyline is her life in the royal court which gets increasingly more visceral, even violent culminating in the pheasant hunt, complete with shotguns and dead birds. The other storyline is Diana's visit to her childhood home. The contrast between the two is stark: the former dark, depressing, even threatening; the latter bright, light, and upbeat.

The events of the Plotline serve to deconstruct Diana's last remaining allegiance, such as it is, to the royal life, enabling her eventually to get in touch with and embrace a determination inside to be free.

There is no place like home ... certainly not the royal life. A Kentucky Fried Chicken store in London, where the story ends, is a meager representation of what Diana wants (normalcy). But as we know, she could never find that ... and lost it once she agreed to become the wife of Prince Charles.

Tomorrow: Characters.