BEFORE: OK, maybe considering all that we know now, all that's come to light over the past two decades about the royal family, maybe you don't associate Princess Diana and Prince Charles with "romance" any more, but their relationship was considered as some kind of "storybook" romance back in the day. It's been over 25 years now since the death of Diana, and for some reason, they made a movie about her starring Kristen Stewart - the curiosity level is very high for this, if nothing else.
Jack Farthing carries over from "Love Wedding Repeat" to play Prince Charies today.
THE PLOT: Diana Spencer, struggling with mental health problems during her Christmas holidays with the Royal Family at their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, decides to end her decade-long marriage to Prince Charles.
AFTER: On so many levels, this film just doesn't work, because it requires the viewer to feel sorry for Princess Diana, and I'm sorry, but that's just not going to happen, not for me, anyway. She lived nothing but a life of privilege, born into a wealthy family and despite any unhappiness she may have had in childhood due to her parents' divorce, she still was able to have anything she ever wanted. The news media made a big deal at the time, something about her being a "commoner" who got engaged to Prince Charles, but just because she had a job as a teacher's assistant, that didn't make her a commoner, not by a long shot. Her father was an Earl, for chrissakes. She grew up in a house that was very close to the royal family's Sandringham Estate, the house was leased from Queen Elizabeth! She grew up calling the queen her "aunt", even if it wasn't true.
Did she have an easy time of things? OK, probably not. Was she caught up in a toxic marriage and a difficult situation? Yeah, probably, but there were things she could have DONE about that, rather than internalize everything and become a nervous wreck, with bulimia and feelings of inadequacy and suicidal thoughts. I mean, I've been depressed lately but at least I'm not as mentally unstable as she was - I don't mean to belittle her problems, but come on, she had all the money she ever needed, why couldn't she afford some therapy? And if you can't handle being in the Royal Family, then maybe don't marry into the Royal Family? Just a thought.
Were there problems in the marriage to Prince Charles (now King Charles) - well, of course, he had a long ongoing affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, who was married to somebody else. So he treated his wife like a second-class citizen, we have to wonder now if he ever was in any kind of love with her, but let's not forget, Diana had affairs, also - like with her riding instructor, and I don't think in this situation that two wrongs make a right. They got married in 1981, but by 1986 both of them were sleeping with other people while trying to maintain appearences - that's just not a formula for success. Sure, I'm Monday-morning quarterbacking here, but explain to me how two married people having affairs is going to play out over the long run. It's just not.
Some of the key players are deceased now, Diana and Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, Charles recently ascended to King, so sure, let's take a look back at the "good old days", just bear in mind they were probably never as good as anybody pretended they were. Hindsight is 20/20, and so this film pretty much confirms that nobody in the family was ever really that happy - they were all just going through the motions based on traditions over what a monarch and her family are supposed to do. Like announcing what everyone's going to be dining on at each meal, having dressers and servants seeing to everything, not having any close personal friends or being able to even open the curtains for fear of photographers catching a glimpse of the princess changing her clothes.
The film is set at Christmas, and nobody seems very festive, what with a tough schedule of posing for the royal family photos, changing clothes 12 times a day, and then having to listen to the entire menu being announced before tucking in to Christmas lunch. God, everything seems so tedious, is that the point here? And then Diana freaked out because Charles was planning to take their sons hunting to shoot pheasants, and she didn't care for guns, or knowing that her sons would be shooting them, so she complained, to no avail, then finally took a stand and burst in to the hunting grounds to take her sons away. I suppose that's to be seen as some kind of watershed moment, because she finally couldn't take it any more, and this anti-hunting stance led to her driving away with Princes William and Harry, and eventually the divorce.
Did she ever consider that maybe her sons might WANT to learn how to shoot pheasants? Not every tradition is automatically bad just because it's an old tradition. Look, I'm against hunting myself, I don't quite see the need for it when you can just buy meat at the supermarket - but on the other hand, pheasants are very dumb birds, and as the Royal Head Chef points out to Diana, the birds were raised to be hunted, if not for the hunt then those birds wouldn't be alive at all, plus they're so dumb that if you don't shoot them, they'll probably all get run over by cars driving through the estate. OK, if that's the hill you want to take a stand on, by all means, go ahead. But a person can only eat so many organic jams and jellies on scones. Plus, NITPICK POINT, the film shows Diana and her sons driving away from the pheasant hunt and then getting KFC from a drive-thru - how is that any better? Didn't those chickens deserve to live out their natural lives without getting coated in 11 herbs and spices and deep-fried?
I get it, Diana wasn't cut out to be a member of the royal family, she couldn't follow all the rules or observe all of their stupid traditions - and the monarchy in the UK is so powerful that whatever the Queen says goes, just because "that's the way it's always been done". But things can change over time, one could say that things HAVE to change over time, even if it's at an extremely slow pace. Diana could have taken a stand and negotiated for change, she was a very powerful figure in terms of doing charity work - which was a great use of her time and energy. Why couldn't she also have devoted some time and energy to changing the system slowly from within? I realize the answer's probably tied up with a bunch of personal issues and mental health problems, but running away from every conflict just isn't going to help over time, hiding in the bathroom and throwing up doesn't seem like a viable solution, either.
Sure, the Royal Family put a lot of pressure on her to lose weight - they had her weighed constantly, they made her feel ashamed for eating desserts, but at the same time, the family had a head chef that would cook her anything she wanted, so those are some mixed signals, right? Then Prince Charles would point out that the farmers worked hard to make the produce, the bees worked hard to make the honey, and she was showing disrespect for them by puking up her meal. He's right in a way, but he was also being an asshole. Plus, the family wants her to not gain weight, but also wants her to feel guilty for NOT eating? What a whole bunch of assholes, those mixed signals are bound to screw anybody up.
According to the film, Diana confided in certain servants, like her dresser and the head chef, even though she knew that anything she said to them was likely to not remain confidential. The servants naturally might gossip about the Royal Family or even report things to the news, but that didn't stop Diana from having the servants get her a pair of wirecutters so she could break into her old house near the Royal Family's estate and consider throwing herself down the stairs. Also, she apparently had visions of Anne Boleyn, the wife of Henry VIII who was beheaded after the King accused her of having an affair, when it was actually HIM who was having affairs. Did somebody place the book about Anne Boleyn in Diana's room to warn her about what could happen to her, or to help drive her insane?
We may never know for sure, or if that even happened, because so much of this film is probably just idle speculation. Much like "Blonde", there were no doubt liberties taken here over what really took place between members of the Royal Family, but I suppose that's inevitable. The film did win praise for Kristen Stewart being able to adapt the look and mannerisms of Princess Diana, and let's not forget that she was Oscar-nominated for Best Actress just one year ago, but I think in the end that only gets you so far. For me, it was a real struggle to get through.
Also starring Kristen Stewart (last seen in "Underwater"), Timothy Spall (last heard in "Early Man"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Jack Nielen, Freddie Spry, Sean Harris (last seen in "The King"), Stella Gonet (last seen in "Nicholas Nickleby"), Richard Sammel (last seen in "Casino Royale"), Elizabeth Berrington (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Lore Stefanek, Amy Manson, James Harkness (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Laura Benson, Wendy Patterson, Libby Rodliffe, John Keogh, Marianne Graffam (last seen in "The Ghost Writer"), Ben Plunkett-Reynolds, Ryan Wichert, Michael Epp (last seen in "Unlocked"), Tom Hudson (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), James Gerard, Thomas Douglas, Emma Darwall-Smith, Kimia Schmidt, Greta Bücker, Henry Castello, Niklas Kohrt, Oriana Gordon, Olga Hellsing, Matthias Wolkowski,
RATING: 4 out of 10 red billiard balls
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