Diana reviews

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Reza
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Re: Diana reviews

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Precious Doll wrote:Had a bit of a movie day at the cinema yesterday (3 films) and finished with Diana.

It's not as bad as most of the English press made out and Naomi Watts is as good as one can be in what is virtually an almost impossible role to play.

I found the last 20 minutes somewhat offensive and showed a complete lack of respect for Dodi's father. You really need to see the film to see what I mean.

Really it's nothing more then a love story that turns sour and having never taken any interest in Diana, alive or dead, I wouldn;t have a clue as to whether the public aspects of the story are even true.

No camp classic, no dog and really not good but very watchable for much of it's length. Kudos to Watts & Andrews for sort of pulling off the seemingly impossible.
I absolutely agree with what you say. I actually enjoyed it a lot especially since it covers a period in her life that was more or less hushed up - the intense affair with a Pakistani doctor. Watts is quite good really and all this bashing the film is getting is ridiculous.
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Re: Diana reviews

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Had a bit of a movie day at the cinema yesterday (3 films) and finished with Diana.

It's not as bad as most of the English press made out and Naomi Watts is as good as one can be in what is virtually an almost impossible role to play.

I found the last 20 minutes somewhat offensive and showed a complete lack of respect for Dodi's father. You really need to see the film to see what I mean.

Really it's nothing more then a love story that turns sour and having never taken any interest in Diana, alive or dead, I wouldn;t have a clue as to whether the public aspects of the story are even true.

No camp classic, no dog and really not good but very watchable for much of it's length. Kudos to Watts & Andrews for sort of pulling off the seemingly impossible.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Eric
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Re: Diana reviews

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flipp525 wrote:Kate Muir - The Times:

"There are a number of lines you never, ever want to hear Diana, Princess of Wales say, and they include: 'I love feeling your hand there', and 'Yes, I've been a mad bitch'. Even when these lines are delivered by the fragrant Naomi Watts ["the fragrant Naomi Watts? What the fuck?], doing her level best with a squirmingly embarrassing script, this film is still atrocious and intrusive."

Christopher Tookey - Daily Mail

"The trouble is that in being so careful and eager not to offend, the film is a more than a little tedious, with a lightweight, romantic storyline that fails to surprise, let alone sustain a movie that lasts nearly two hours. It has the slightness of a Barbara Cartland novella, but the love affair is treated with ponderous solemnity, as though it were another Gone With The Wind. It's slow and terribly, terribly dull."
Those two clips could hardly be more divergent. I imagine this is somewhere in Hitchcock territory -- both impressively awful but somehow not enough to be enjoyable as camp.
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Re: Diana reviews

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Kate Muir - The Times:

"There are a number of lines you never, ever want to hear Diana, Princess of Wales say, and they include: 'I love feeling your hand there', and 'Yes, I've been a mad bitch'. Even when these lines are delivered by the fragrant Naomi Watts ["the fragrant Naomi Watts"? What the fuck?], doing her level best with a squirmingly embarrassing script, this film is still atrocious and intrusive."

Christopher Tookey - Daily Mail

"The trouble is that in being so careful and eager not to offend, the film is a more than a little tedious, with a lightweight, romantic storyline that fails to surprise, let alone sustain a movie that lasts nearly two hours. It has the slightness of a Barbara Cartland novella, but the love affair is treated with ponderous solemnity, as though it were another Gone With The Wind. It's slow and terribly, terribly dull."
Last edited by flipp525 on Fri Sep 06, 2013 10:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Diana reviews

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Looks like we can cross Watts off the list. One reviewer on Twitter says, "There's a scene in Diana in which, disguised, she walks down Old Compton Street and gets wolf-whistled by every man she passes. That's all." I think we might have a new camp classic!

Naomi Watts stars in dark tale of love weighed down by princess’s baggage
by: Geoffrey McKnab

Oliver Hirschbiegel’s biopic of Diana could easily have seemed cynical and opportunistic in the extreme. Hirschbiegel is a distinguished German director who made a very well received film about Adolf Hitler in his bunker (Downfall), but it’s hard to see how that qualifies him to tell the story of the “people’s princess”.

At tonight’s premiere, Hirschbiegel asked the audience to approach his film without preconceptions. That, of course, is impossible to do. However, Diana works well enough as a dark romantic drama and is far less exploitative than it might have been. Naomi Watts gives an intense and volatile performance as the princess. The problem, though, is that she doesn’t really resemble the character she is playing, and the feature shifts wildly in tone.

The film is set toward the end of Diana’s life and chronicles her secret love affair with Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). The brooding opening sequence set in the Ritz in Paris in 1997 on the night of her death is brilliantly shot. We see Diana from behind as she walks through her suite and toward the lift. Then, just as she is about to head out into the night with Dodi Fayed, we are whisked back two years.

At times, there is a novelettish quality to the storytelling in keeping with the tone of the Kate Snell book on which the film is based. When Diana first spots Hasnat in a London hospital, she is instantly smitten. He is a heart surgeon, she is the “queen of hearts”. She smuggles him into Kensington Palace and they eat hamburgers and watch football together. Andrews is personable and charming as the doctor, who smokes, drinks, loves jazz, but is also utterly devoted to saving lives. Diana dons a dark wig so she can accompany him incognito to Ronnie Scott’s, reads Grey’s Anatomy so she can talk to him about medicine and shows her devotion to him at one stage by washing up at his flat. At one stage, after an argument, she even puts on a Liverpudlian accent and pretends she is called Rita so he will take her call.

At this point, we seem to be veering in the direction of a Working Title romcom. However, there is a very dark strain to the storytelling. At times, as paparazzi crowd in and in the wake of her notorious Martin Bashir interview, she seems like a hunted animal. We learn about her self-harm. Watts’ performance carries echoes of her young ingénue, adrift in Hollywood and losing her sanity in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

There are dutiful nods toward Diana’s work in the fight against AIDS and as part of the campaign to ban landmines. We see her in Angola and in Pakistan, where she charms Hasnat’s family.

The historical accuracy of Diana is bound to be questioned. What makes it frustrating as a film, though, are its many sudden shifts in mood. Perhaps, Hirschbiegel could have made a stronger film if he hadn’t been lumbered with the baggage that the real Diana brings and had simply told a fictional story about a love affair between a princess and an outsider. That, though, would have defeated the purpose.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."

-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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