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Diana
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Entertainment One Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (18th May 2015). |
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The Film
 "I'm just like most people... actually I'm not like most people at all." I'm sure most (if not all) of those involved in "Diana" came to the project with noble intentions, and expected it to turn out well. The director with one Oscar-nominated film under his belt at the helm; the celebrated playwright, penning a script adapted from an acclaimed collection of first hand accounts; and the award-winning (twice Oscar-nominated) actress with at least a passing resemblance to Lady Di in the lead role. And then, of course, there was the promise that they’d all come together to tell a true story unknown to the general audience—which was a somewhat interesting prospect in itself, considering so much of the Diana-Charles narrative had already been aired in public. How unfortunate then that the film, once thought to be a possible Oscar contender, is ultimately just more silly tabloid fodder. I suppose it's slightly, sickeningly, fitting that even 16 years after her death, the story of The People's Princess would devolve into a rather rote case of sexualized scandal. In the end, Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Diana" is more than a disappointment; it's a disgrace. A certifiably circuitous and irritatingly inconsistent biopic that has so much wrong with it I don't really know where to begin. In the supplements included on this disc, several people refer to the Princess of Wales as a conundrum. A compelling but uncrackable figure, who was a walking-talking contradiction in human form. Indeed, I have little doubt Diana was one of the more emotionally complex public figures of the late 20th century. And I expect there was a certain falseness; a disconnect between the face for the cameras and the real person behind closed doors. But Hirschbiegel and screenwriter Stephen Jeffreys have made the issue vastly more complicated and downright confusing than it probably ever was, deciding to present the Diana as a pseudo-paradox. Their reading of her is decidedly more malicious than I expected (or think fair)—making her two-faced rather than someone with two distinct, public and private personalities. Their "Diana" is easily manipulated by those around her and a master-manipulator herself; as fragile as a bird and as sly as a fox, and too flighty to be caught by the Windsor hunting dogs either way. She's both victim and victor—vindictive and vindicated in her fight for a post-royal place in the world. The film crudely (and cruelly) paints her as a saint and a sinner, and goes to extreme lengths to canonize and demonize her at jarringly incongruent points. The end result is a muddled, messy, and meaningless as you'd expect such a confused combat of contrasts to be. Constructed on flimsy framework, the film opens as Diana (Naomi Watts) readies for that fateful night on the town with billionaire boyfriend Dodi Fayed (Cas Anvar), which ended with both of their deaths in that tunnel in France. But before it ever gets to the crash, instead ominously ending with a CCTV shot of them exiting an elevator, the film rewinds history three years to tell the relatively unknown tale of Diana's romance with Dr. Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), a Pakistani heart surgeon whom she met through her charity work. Set on the cusp of her divorce from Charles, and by proxy the Royal Family, Diana is presented as a sort of sheltered figure who retreats from battle, battered and beaten, to an empty Kensington Palace. In one of the very first scenes, she comes home from an event to send away the help, and cook herself beans on toast and lounge about in unstylish sweatpants. Diana longs to be normal, out of the limelight, and finds some normality in Khan, who would rather stay in and watch a soccer game than go out on the town or to some black-tie gala. The film unfolds as a sort of fractured fairytale, their relationship doomed for inevitable failure. Sadly, there isn't much more to the film than Diana and Hasnat's supposed love story. In the most basic sense, the narrative is that of the princess and the peasant as they try to persevere against the odds, but can't because society will not let them. It’s simply the making and unmaking of their relationship under the constant eye of the media. I cannot abide biopics (especially biopics of women) that distill someone's legacy down to the person (or persons) they decided to sleep with. Such an approach traps the film in the tropes of usually tragic romance, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it didn't also, much more damningly, overshadows whatever else the person contributed to society. Yes, Diana had numerous partners during and after the time she was married to Charles (as did he), but she was also a humanitarian, involved in several causes—instrumental in both exposing the dangers of unexploded land mines in impoverished regions of the world, and rising awareness of the AIDS epidemic in particular. She was also, and this seems silly to point out, but so necessary considering the film somehow manages to only make passing reference to it, a mother. It's disappointing then that "Diana" drops all mention of her work relating to AIDS charities, and only uses her crusade against land mines as a means to recreate the famous photograph in which she traversed a field of undetonated devices in a flak-jacket. William and Harry are shown from the back, in a wide shot, in one scene; Diana mentions them at a few other passing moments. I hate to say it, but part of me wonders if the filmmakers downplayed the humanitarian and motherly aspects of Diana so it was easier to demonize her in certain points. Yes, demonize. The film is odd. It wants to give the benefit of the doubt to Diana; to celebrate her in spite of her flaws (which, again, I don't doubt she had; she was after all, human). But it jarringly blames her for the pediment she's in at various times, and frequently paints her in a less positive light. Take for instance the infamous BBC interview—in which she admitted she had self-harmed, and felt suffocated in her marriage by the presence of a third party ("There were three people in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded"). As the film plays it, her responses were carefully rehearsed, emotional beats and all, as a sort of plan of attack. The recreated interview is cut with her practicing in the mirror, and the implication that it was all calculated. Later, she admits the interview was ammunition fired back across the aisle. A chess move in a game of shadows, and not necessarily emotionally honest or earnest in the slightest. So… check and mate? Later, the film portrays her relationship with Fayed as a rebound, a means to an end to make Hasnat Khan jealous after their sudden breakup, by which she felt betrayed. As the film shows it, the famous photographs of Diana and Dodi together on his yacht were an orchestration of her design. She told a friend in the media when and where to take the pictures. As the film sells it, the whole thing was all just an act, so Khan would see the images back home; an act done out of spite. Time and time again, the film presents scenes of similar theme, which suggest, more than anything else, Diana was a far more malevolent than benevolent creature. Most of the time, she isn't easy to root for in the film. It constantly raises the question, is this really a biopic worthy of her legacy? Purely in terms of structure and direction, the film is a mess. Hirschbiegel has apparently lost whatever talent he once possessed (and he must have had some; "Downfall" (2004) is a masterfully made picture). And in his hands, "Diana" is aimless, lifeless, and completely lacking in style. Many scenes amount to nothing, and consist of shots of characters sitting around; several sequences have no consequence or significance at all. The film is filled with… filler. And, ultimately, it all ends up a mashing mixture of convoluted nothingness. The film's final scene negates the romance between Khan and Diana, suggesting that he was never her true love, nor was he ever hers; that, in the end, she belonged to the people. It's pure nihilism, but if that's the the point, why go through the motions for an hour and a half then, which up to that point pretended to make their love story one for the ages? The final scene makes the whole film a meaningless failure. The fact that the final moment ends with Khan, not Diana, in a movie that bears here name as the single element of the title points out the bigger issue better than perhaps anything else. “Diana” is a film that purports to tell the story of the woman who won the heart of millions (while, ironically, perhaps never those few she was actually related to), and instead makes it an oddly intimate yet distant story of Diana and The Doctor (not the timey-wimey one I'm afraid). The royals, her charities, and indeed, most of the things that made Diana Diana merely get a peripheral reference. And yet, through it all, Watts is pretty impressive, and even more so considering she seems to be the one constant amidst the sea of inconsistency and occasional fit of awfulness that is the rest of the picture. She may not look exactly like Diana—in fact, besides the blonde hair and similar fashion sense, they barely have a passing resemblance—and she sounds like her even less, but Watts does command the screen with a sure sense of who Diana was, and has the undeniable magnetism. Her performance is better than the other actors she's teamed up with; better than the soggy script and the deliriously bad dialog; better than the direction. Better than anything about the film, except maybe the production and consume design. Is she alone enough to save "Diana" from being a disgrace; a black mark on the legacy of Lady Di? No. Unfortunately, Watts is forced to wade through so much of the problematic plot that her work is forever tarnished by every other failing, and, in the end, she only draws attention to the other areas in which the film fails. "Diana" should've been better, and it's a damn shame that it isn't.
Video
Although shot on 35mm film "Diana" has an unmistakably clean sheen, with very subtle grain. Coupled with the surprisingly sharp clarity of most scenes, the film's impressive 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p AVC MPEG-4 transfer could be easily mistaken as digital in origin. Finished on a 2K DI, I suppose at least partly it is. Colors are bright and bold. Scenes awash in the greens of the English and Welsh countryside contrast with the yellowish tint of the later scenes in the south of France, the vibrant red of a carpet pops against Diana's blue gown, and so on impress. Closeups and wide shots alike are stuffed with minutiae and sumptuous fine detailing. The encode is flawless, with no signs of manipulation—edge enhancement and noise reduction are a non-issue—or egregious compression artifacts. Sections of the film mimic lower quality sources: CCTV footage of Diana and Dodi in an elevator; an interview, and later a speech, done up to look 90's era terrestrial broadcast. These moments are filled with inherent flaws, including interlacing and noticeably inferior resolution. Contrast is a little on the boosted side, with inky blacks that crush some detail in a few night scenes. And a handful of shots are cast in a diffused soft focus. Overall, while it's a disastrous film, "Diana" doesn't disappoint as a Blu-ray.
Audio
"Diana" opens with a fluid steadicam sequence. The camera roves around the princess' hotel suite as she readies for what will be her last night on Earth. It begins on the balcony, roaring crowd of paparazzi below, and then meanders into the room, passing a stereo playing classical music, moving through a pair of mumbling security guards, to settle on Diana as she walks the rooms padded in carpet, wood and tile, heels clicking at different tones for each surface. To say that the opening in one of the more impressive sounding sequences in the film should suggest that "Diana" is not a work of big set pieces and sonic bombast. In fact, some of the most chaotic moments in the film are nearly silent, as though Diana's senses are overloaded while hounded by photographers. Subtle, effective atmospherics take center stage, with each camera click and flash rendered with crisp clarity, and each line of dialog is easily desirable. Front focused, and dialog driven, surrounds are used for score bleed and slight crowd chatter. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) track is a very good one, consistently solid, but rarely overbearingly immersive. Optional English subtitles and an unnecessary English LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down have also been included.
Extras
At first glance the collection of featurettes eOne has compiled to celebrate "Diana" look quite impressive. Unfortunately, each featurette is merely an interview recorded for the film's electronic press kit. Needlessly lengthy, the material is exhausting for all the wrong reasons. Comments run from the harmlessly uninformative to drearily dull, with few genuine moments of actual insight. The 8 interview featurettes are found under a heading titled "Cast & Crew Interviews" (1080p). Interviewees include: - Naomi Watts which runs for 9 minutes 17 seconds. - Naveen Andrews which runs for 5 minutes 48 seconds. - Douglas Hodge which runs for 3 minutes 55 seconds. - Charles Edwards which runs for 2 minutes 46 seconds. - Director Oliver Hirschbiegel which runs for 8 minutes 46 seconds. - Producer Robert Bernstein which runs for 6 minutes 37 seconds. - Production Designer Kave Quinn which runs for 3 minutes 24 seconds. - Costume Designer Julian Day which runs for 4 minutes 57 seconds. A bonus trailer for "Twice Born" (1080p) runs for 2 minutes 30 seconds and plays before the disc's main menu. A 16-page booklet focusing on Diana's wardrobe and fashion sense, and the film's costumes is also included.
Packaging
eOne Entertainment brings Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Diana" to Blu-ray in hardly regal fashion; the single, dual layered BD-50 disc is housed in a Blu-ray keep case. A cardboard slip-cover has been included in first pressings.
Overall
Watt's performance is about the only thing worthy of discussion or even passing praise when it comes to "Diana", a boneheaded biopic that has so many things wrong with it I don't even know where to begin. Hirschbiegel has put together a listless, plodding, unfortunately opaque portrait of a fascinatingly complex figure in modern history. It's a problematic picture that doesn't even know what to make of its central character, whether to canonize or demonize her, and decides instead to diminish her life story to a rote romance in the final years of her life. I won't say the film sullies the legacy of Lady Di; but it's certainly no better than the tabloid journalism that already did the job 16 years ago. At least the Blu-ray looks and sounds great, although, with an anemic EPK-heavy supplemental package, it too fails to live up to expectations in the end. My advice is to give "Diana" no attention. In life, she desperately craved to be out of the limelight, to have peace and quiet. Grant her that final wish and skip this one.
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