Diana (Review)

DIRECTOR: Oliver Hirschbiegeldiana_ver2_xlg

CAST: Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Cas Avar, Laurence Belcher, Harry Holland, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Charles Edwards, Daniel Pirrie, Art Malik, Juliet Stevenson

RUNNING TIME: 113 mins

CERTIFICATE: 12A

BASICALLY…: The final few years of the life of Princess Diana (Watts), whose romance with heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan (Andrews) leads to dire (in all senses of the word) outcomes…

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NOW FOR THE REVIEW…

As if the media hadn’t done enough damage to the life of Diana, Princess of Wales…

This film. This goddamn film.

Where do we even start?

Writer Stephen Jeffreys, mistaking non-researched and fact-reliant information for complex and cutting-edge drama, has created a script that wants to be daring in the many ways it shows “one of the most famous women in the world” (as the film repeatedly tells us) doing certain things. However, it instead comes across as contrived, extremely dull and just a little bit pretentious with some of the biggest clunkers of the year passing for actual dialogue. One particular favourite is from Naveen Andrews’ Dr Hasnat Khan: “You don’t perform heart surgeons… heart surgeons perform you.” Not only does that not make a lick of sense, but doesn’t it sound like a Yakov Smirnoff joke to you? “In Soviet Russia, heart surgeons perform you!” Another beautifully bad piece of dire-logue comes from Diana herself: something along the lines of “How come smokers always smoke after sex?” Erm, maybe it’s because they’re smokers, you friggin’ idiot! You just answered your own question!

Not helping matters is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s shambolic directing, which becomes more and more hollow as we keep getting scenes that are never developed and keep getting pointless side characters we never even get to know. For instance, an early scene sees Diana rush to hospital to be at the side of someone. However, we don’t know who this person is in relation to Diana nor have we seen them together to warrant the emotion that the scene wants us to feel. It’s hard to feel sad about a guy we know absolutely nothing about, and the creative forces behind this film clearly did not catch on to this.

Jeffreys and Hirschbiegel pace the film like a bad soap opera or TV movie that not even Channel 5 would want to broadcast. As a result, a lot of events that go on seem episodic and repetitive to a point where it becomes awfully irritating. Diana and her heart-surgeon lover Hasnat have a major falling-out after their affair is leaked to the press and how he does not want the public life that she has, but a few scenes later they’re back in each other’s arms. Later, Hasnat furiously ends their relationship for virtually the same reasons but literally the next scene they back together. It seems to be the film’s idea of lover’s tiff but these pointless fake-outs add nothing to the overall drama and could have easily been cut out altogether.

That, and the main relationship between Diana and Hasnat, as depicted in this film, is not warranted for audience support as neither have any sort of chemistry with each other and neither side is particularly likable. Hasnat, to start with, is invited over to Diana’s for a meal she made, simple and pleasant enough. But not only does he majorly hint at his disapproval of her cooking she probably worked hard over to impress him – strike one – but he has her order a takeaway meal from Burger King (oddly using the current modern logo as opposed to the 1994/5 one) which he openly admits as being a more wholesome meal in front of her face – strike two – and then turns on the football for the rest of the evening while his host awkwardly watches with him. And that makes strike three, rendering the despicability of this awful house guest complete. He’s like that one douchebag you invite to a dinner party but refuses to leave and becomes this kind of unofficial occupier as he raids your kitchen and watches your TV. It’s hard to see him as a credible love interest after that for the rest of the film, seeing as how awful he truly was.

But unfortunately, Diana – not the real life person, the depiction in this film – is much, much worse. We meet her as she feels troubled, despite a life of luxury and a house of servants paid to do anything for her. She soon falls for a man who we have already established is the absolute worst person for her, and as their relationship grows the more desperate she becomes to try and contain it (keep in mind, she even states at one point that as a Princess, she should “get whatever I want”). When they do break up for the first time, she doesn’t take it well as she resorts to the clichéd moping on the couch and crying. She soon begins phoning him at work and, most disturbingly, goes over to his house, starts calling for him outside his window, somehow breaks in and washes all of his dirty dishes. Because that’s how the media wants us to remember Princess Diana, as a stalker right out of Fatal Attraction. But it gets even worse – when they do finally honest-to-God-this-time break up, she accepts various invitations to join Dodi Fayed on his yacht and arranges for a photographer to catch them together during more intimate moments JUST TO SPITE HASNAT. Good Grieving God. So, she’s using another man who for all we know was actually, honestly caring toward her as some sort of a rebound for her worse love interest. And this is the film’s biggest insult to Princess Diana, the biggest turd on her grave: it has more or less turned Diana, Princess of Wales, into Bella Swan. An emotionless, uncaring, self-centred, whining, spoilt little brat with the mentality of a dumb teenage girl. That is the deepest level of depravity this film could sink to, and it’s made it all the way to the bottom sea bed. Whoever out of Jeffreys and Hirschbiegel thought it was a good idea to write a film version of The People’s Princess along the same lines of the worst modern female role model in literature and film deserves to be driven down that Parisian tunnel at midnight in her place. It’s a giant middle finger to this woman’s legacy, to her memory, her family, and her supporters who nicknamed her the People’s Princess to begin with. We don’t usually allow expletives on this website – after all, we’re aiming for everyone and anyone interested in film – but in this instance, the below NSFW clip directed toward the filmmakers of Diana, quite possibly the worst film we have seen in cinemas this year, is entirely justified.

(P.S. If the makers of Tropic Thunder are somehow reading this, PLEASE make a Les Grossman film. From that clip alone, you can tell he needs one. And it’ll already be ten million times better than this piece of garbage.)

SO, TO SUM UP…

Do you really need a summary? Well, in case you do, Diana exceeds awfulness and goes straight into disgustingly insulting territory through its depictions of one of the most cherished public personas of the late 20th century. Under any circumstances, do NOT go and see this truly evil motion picture. Avoid like the plague.

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