11/9/2023 0 Comments Lights out diana still alive![]() On the other end of the quality scale, among the various straight-to-TV biopics, Hirschbiegel's film, starring Naomi Watts as the Princess, is arguably the biggest turkey of them all. ![]() Certainly, whether owing to that dramatically fruitful paradox or another impetus, she has inspired innumerable works of popular culture, from visual art (see Ian Rank-Broadley's statue of Diana, erected earlier this year at her former Kensington Palace home and portraying her as a deific being) to theatre and film to TV: at least a dozen actresses have portrayed her on screen over the years, including, to most acclaim, Kristen Stewart in Spencer and Emma Corrin in series four of The Crown. That so many filmmakers, documentarians, television commissioners, authors, artists, performers, and musical theatre composers have tried to tackle the Diana story, and indeed myth, serves to suggest that Larraín is right. That paradox… is just wonderful for film, and for art." And at the same time, is the most mysterious person ever. "I think, culturally speaking, she's one of the best-known people of contemporary culture. When died in '97, I realised that the world was grieving." It was after Jackie, his similarly challenging 2016 biopic about the titular Kennedy, née Bouvier, later Onassis, that he decided to make Spencer, diving into a deep research process around the late Princess – including reading a lot of articles from the BBC, he notes. And then I realised that she was just one of millions around the world. Because, of course, when I grew up in Chile and saw my mum become very interested, I was a little boy. But why does he think Diana – as a cultural figure, a pop icon, a mythology – resonates so much with her? "Well, I'm not sure," he tells BBC Culture. Like the titular woman herself, it is simultaneously familiar and enigmatic, brimming with challenging, expressive surrealism, as it imagines Diana on a horrifying Christmas break at the Queen's Sandringham House estate in 1991, when her relationship with Prince Charles is reaching its death knell.Ĭhilean director Larraín, whose wider filmography might be considered esoteric, has gone on record as having made Spencer because he wanted to make a film his mum would appreciate. The two films couldn't be more different: while Diana is a formulaic, artistically vacant disaster, Spencer benefits from Larraín's deft directorial hand. ![]() Most will be familiar, of course, with the last attempt to render Diana's life on the big screen: Oliver Hirschbiegel's infamously schlocky Diana (2013), which covered her two-year, post-divorce dalliance with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, as adapted from Kate Snell's biography Diana: Her Last Love (2001). This may ostensibly be a film about Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, née Spencer, but it is not, by any measure of conventional wisdom, the sort of period biopic generally en vogue in Hollywood cinema. Seasons 1-3 are also available on DVD and Blu-ray."A fable from a true tragedy," reads a title card in the dawning moments of Pablo Larraín's Spencer (2021): an early signpost, perhaps, of the fantastical twists and turns to come. The Crown seasons 1-5 are now streaming on Netflix. However hiding behind this doesn't remove the onus to do things responsibly – particularly when touching on sensitive issues. The Crown is, as it continues to highlight to concerned viewers, a fictional drama. "I would say that Diana had been emotionally hurt in the past, but I never saw in her anything to suggest that she was mentally unstable." The only worries she had were about her boys, as any mother would. ![]() With this knowledge, The Crown's decision to incorporate this conspiracy theory into its narrative seems in particular bad taste.ĭuring the inquest into Diana's death in 2008, Khan stated: "In the last year of her life, Diana was just like any other normal person. The truth behind Princess Diana and Dr KhanĪfter her death – and you don't need us to spell out the specifics that surrounded that – headlines were engulfed with salacious rumours that alleged that Diana held concerns that she would one day be in an accident.
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