Hanah Lee

I found this movie painful to watch for four main reasons. Firstly, the soundtrack was physically nauseating. Harsh, discordant music, obviously meant to make the viewer uneasy, crescendos to overwhelm nearly every scene. I can only assume the sounds are meant to induce an empathizing sort of anxiety, (so we can viscerally feel the impatience Diana must be feeling for each interminable moment) but the noise is so unrelenting it makes the whole film nearly unwatchable. I was grateful to have a remote control in hand to turn down the annoyance when I couldn’t stand another minute and was on the verge of giving up. While I understand the use of a soundtrack as an emotional tool, it made the journey all the more distasteful. Secondly, because we are already very familiar with the people who are being portrayed in this movie, we are looking for something to be added to this particular story, (a story that has already been rehashed ad nauseam) some insight, or a fresh take, to cause us to be willing to reconsider these incredibly famous royal celebrities yet again. What we’re left with instead are gruesome, nightmarish caricatures, unfamiliar and nearly inhuman, impossible to form a connection to. Charles as a frowning, unfeeling, cartoonish villain. The Queen, an omniscient, jewel encrusted, automaton of disapproval, adhering emptily to tradition. Diana herself as an immature, image obsessed, fountain of endless vomit, literally eating and regurgitating her own jewelry. The writers have taken the shells of personalities we already recognized well, but instead of growing them and giving them roots, they managed to shrink them into a bitter essence. Thirdly, the story itself is lacking movement and focus. It stagnates in a plotless dreamscape of seemingly truncated sentences, lazing from one half-conceived hallucination to the next without delivering a single thought that could be considered satisfying or complete. The overlaying of visually stunning pastoral landscapes reminded me of an European perfume commercial, trying to manipulate me to buy something by branding it with a façade of luxury. The four day snapshot in which the story is set was written with a sadly reductionist view of the struggles Diana faced, summed up by the repetitive use of graphic bulimia to illustrate her inability to cope. The whole movie is contrived with an artsy perspective that feels pithy and patronizingly insincere. Shallowly fixated on opulent menus prepared by a militant kitchen staff that fails to arouse the viewers appetite. And finally, the supposed Oscar winning performance. While I will admit to feeling fascinated at first glance by the mimicry of some of Diana’s mannerisms, especially her walk, I was eventually distracted by the overemphasis of her fragility in the repetition of Kristen Stewart’s puppy like head tilt. The actress’s choppy, unnatural accent is sometimes completely incomprehensible and at other times cringingly embarrassing. It’s often hard to tell if the actor’s portrayal is truly at fault or the script writer’s dialogue. This movie is clearly not meant to flatter the long departed princess, so if you are considering watching it because you are a fan, prepare to be disappointed and disgusted. The flimsy, inarticulate portrayal might as well be a scarecrow dressed in Diana’s clothing for all the warmth she fails to convey.