Diana is a rare beast. You have to try very hard to make a biography film that is so perfectly and so calculatedly terrible. Diana isn’t the product of people who don’t care, it’s the product of people who care too much about the cynical market of prestige biography films. As such, with focus-group precision targeting, the film hits what might be the most bitter of sweet spots. It is both toothless and incredibly cynical; manipulative and shallow; vacuous and crammed with unnecessary and irritating detail.
Most damning of all is the way that the film seems perfectly calibrated to fit the public image of the People’s Princess, never bold enough to challenge or explore her work, her life or her legacy. Given how raw the public’s nerves are, even sixteen years after her tragic death, it might have been expecting too much to hope for a provocative or compelling exploration of one of the most iconic figures of the past three decades. However, we might have hoped it would at least be interesting.
It’s a minefield…
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Angola, bbc, Chicken Cottage, diana, Diana Princess of Wales, Hasnat Khan, Martin Bashir, Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Oliver Hirschbiegel, People's Princess, Royal Family, Times | 6 Comments »
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