Diana

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Diana seeks to reintroduce us to one of the 20th century’s most famous figures by casting her in a new light—that of a lost, love-struck woman trying to write the next chapter in her embattled life in the public eye. Focusing on the years leading up to Diana, Princess of Wales’ death at the age of 36 in a car accident in the summer of 1997, Diana fails to offer much insight into the long-term relationship that, as the movie argues, helped her turn the corner after the dissolution of her marriage to Prince Charles. Some biopics seek to offer a complex, ambiguous take on their subjects—Diana, by comparison, is merely stubbornly uncurious.
The film stars Naomi Watts as Diana, setting the action in 1995 as she struggles to fill the hours in her large, empty palace. She and Charles have separated—he’s already begun his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles—and Diana mostly spends her time focusing on philanthropic endeavors. But a visit to a local hospital puts her in contact with a handsome, dedicated heart surgeon named Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), and a mutual attraction soon develops. But because of her international fame, they must proceed cautiously, particularly because the private Hasnat isn’t sure he can cope with the amount of attention Diana attracts from the media.
Using Kate Snell’s book Diana: Her Last Love as their inspiration, Hirschbiegel (Downfall, The Invasion) and screenwriter Stephen Jeffreys pursue a potentially intriguing idea: How hard would it be for a celebrity and an ordinary person to date? Such a scenario has been tackled in purely fictional films like Notting Hill and The American President, and Diana somewhat boldly tries to be a comparably lighthearted romantic comedy-drama in which a tabloid sensation and a shy Pakistani doctor engage in a fraught courtship that must remain hidden lest it be exposed by the ravenous paparazzi. (Like in a typically dopey rom-com, Diana is shown donning a wig and hiding her beloved in the backseat of her car as she drives past palace security.)