First Jobs, and now this. Looks like the biopics in the recent past have made it a point to disgrace the name of the very person on whom the biopic is based. Diana is no less. This movie will leave you extremely disappointed.
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, Diana tracks the last two years of Princess Diana’s (played by Naomi Watts) life before the horrid accident in Paris that claimed her life. These two years were spent in separation from Prince Charles and involved a love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (played by Naveen Andrews). This movie tries to encapsulate the struggles she had with coping with loneliness and also focuses on her humanitarian efforts. She is the people’s princess who likes to question the status quo.
This movie is heartless and cumbersome. The script is intended to be intense, but with dialogues like “You don’t perform the operation, the operation performs you” the script just doesn’t have the depth and intensity required to lift this movie. Although the movie tries very hard, we fail to see the person behind the persona. It just scratches the surface of the emotional turmoil Princess must have gone through during her final years. There is no connect with the audience and you don’t feel a punch in the gut to make you root for the character; a necessity for any commendable biopic.
The movie strangely suggests that Princess Diana herself orchestrated the media infamy which resulted in her public image spiraling downwards. The plot is structured in a way so as to show that her final years were just a battle with the paparazzi. All this and more fails to be hard hitting. It infact belittles her image. In the end Princess Diana comes out as confused, delusional and frankly delirious while in reality she was troubled and was struggling with fighting her demons. However, towards the conclusion of the movie, when the Princess’s death is announced, you do feel a lump in your throat but it will have nothing to do with the narrative.
Naomi Watts does a remarkable job portraying the people’s princess. She gets the look, gait and even the voice just right. She gives it her all but she fails to breathe life into the character. Naveen Andrews tires to look sincere and confident but ends up looking smug.
I give “Diana” 1.5 Golden Tickets out of 5.
For a movie about a woman of heart, this movie is strangely heartless.
Cine Tikka Masala 