Diana (12A.)
Directed by Oliver Hirschbeigel.
Starring Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Cas Anvar and Juliet Stevenson. 113 mins.
Don’t pay any heed to the reviews rubbishing this film. They’re right, but that’s largely coincidental. This film may be terrible but it did provoke an emotional response that I didn’t believe myself capable of – very briefly I felt sympathy for, and protective of, Lady/ Princess Diana. Since its World premiere two weeks ago this biopic about the last two years of her life and her love affair with Pakistani born heart surgeon Hasnat Khan has been aggressively rubbished. At the screening I attended it was clear that the mob, even though they were a week late for the party, were primed for the kill. The competition to hoot louder and more derisively than other viewers was engaged from about the second minute. They had pushed her down the stairs before she had time to fall by her own tottering momentum. There are plenty of moments that merit laughter though I would argue that it is no more risible than that stupid Thatcher film. That though had a compelling central character – determined, resolute, totally evil and wrestling with the future of the country. This has a central character that is vacuous, vain but mostly well-meaning who is struggling to reconcile her superfluity with her enormous fame.
It’s the soppy romance that really kills the film. If The Iron Lady was a Comic Strip satire played straight, Diana is like a Sylvie Krin parody in Private Eye. It doesn’t seem possible that a seemingly astute director (Hirschbeigel directed the Hitler drama Downfall) and a performer as assured as Watts couldn’t find a perceptive angle with which to address the character, but they simply accept Diana’s conception of herself as an idealistic tragic romantic figure.
The two central performances are awful. Given the script and the approach there was probably no way they could be anything else but they surely don’t help themselves. As Khan, Naveen Andrew doesn’t show anything that could generate the passion Diana is supposed to feel for him. At times he has a bumbling, stilted, awkwardness that is oddly reminiscent of Charles. Watts, who is usually flawless in any role, never comes close to convincing. She doesn’t look like her, The Haircut just sits on her head and, most of all, she isn’t tall enough. She does though look exactly like esteemed journalist and Diana biographer Tina Brown. She comes across as a Sloaney Diana copycat rather than the actual woman herself.
That she can’t give her character any gravitas is probably appropriate and typical of a film whose flaws are its chief virtues. Of course you’ll laugh at the corny, cliché ridden dialogue but not for the usual reasons. Rather than being laughable inappropriate, every cringeworthy line rings horribly true. It's entirely possible that her life was exactly like this ludicrous and ridiculous film.
Directed by Oliver Hirschbeigel.
Starring Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Cas Anvar and Juliet Stevenson. 113 mins.
Don’t pay any heed to the reviews rubbishing this film. They’re right, but that’s largely coincidental. This film may be terrible but it did provoke an emotional response that I didn’t believe myself capable of – very briefly I felt sympathy for, and protective of, Lady/ Princess Diana. Since its World premiere two weeks ago this biopic about the last two years of her life and her love affair with Pakistani born heart surgeon Hasnat Khan has been aggressively rubbished. At the screening I attended it was clear that the mob, even though they were a week late for the party, were primed for the kill. The competition to hoot louder and more derisively than other viewers was engaged from about the second minute. They had pushed her down the stairs before she had time to fall by her own tottering momentum. There are plenty of moments that merit laughter though I would argue that it is no more risible than that stupid Thatcher film. That though had a compelling central character – determined, resolute, totally evil and wrestling with the future of the country. This has a central character that is vacuous, vain but mostly well-meaning who is struggling to reconcile her superfluity with her enormous fame.
It’s the soppy romance that really kills the film. If The Iron Lady was a Comic Strip satire played straight, Diana is like a Sylvie Krin parody in Private Eye. It doesn’t seem possible that a seemingly astute director (Hirschbeigel directed the Hitler drama Downfall) and a performer as assured as Watts couldn’t find a perceptive angle with which to address the character, but they simply accept Diana’s conception of herself as an idealistic tragic romantic figure.
The two central performances are awful. Given the script and the approach there was probably no way they could be anything else but they surely don’t help themselves. As Khan, Naveen Andrew doesn’t show anything that could generate the passion Diana is supposed to feel for him. At times he has a bumbling, stilted, awkwardness that is oddly reminiscent of Charles. Watts, who is usually flawless in any role, never comes close to convincing. She doesn’t look like her, The Haircut just sits on her head and, most of all, she isn’t tall enough. She does though look exactly like esteemed journalist and Diana biographer Tina Brown. She comes across as a Sloaney Diana copycat rather than the actual woman herself.
That she can’t give her character any gravitas is probably appropriate and typical of a film whose flaws are its chief virtues. Of course you’ll laugh at the corny, cliché ridden dialogue but not for the usual reasons. Rather than being laughable inappropriate, every cringeworthy line rings horribly true. It's entirely possible that her life was exactly like this ludicrous and ridiculous film.
