Year: 2021
Director: Pablo Larraín
What I was expecting:
1.) A solid biopic with a decent-enough performance from the Pope of Mope, Kristen Stewart — basically a big-screen version of The Crown.
What I got:
1.) An intense, claustrophobic, hallucinatory psychodrama, more Mulholland Drive than The Crown.
2.) A prowling camera that turns Sandringham into The Overlook Hotel and the Royal family into the sinister, watchful islanders from The Wicker Man.
3.) A performance from Kristen Stewart that is definitely excellent and intuitively leans into the unexpected weirdness of the whole thing, but still didn’t impress me quite as much as Emma Corrin in The Crown.
4.) A film that often gets in its own way, conveniently forgetting Diana’s own aristocratic roots in its rush to emphasise her outlier credentials, overlooking the fact that she spends almost no time – over Christmas! – with the two boys to whom she is supposedly devoted, and inadvertently inviting you to share the Royal family’s frustration at her frankly flaky behaviour.
5.) A sublimely skronky score from Jonny Greenwood.
6.) Beautiful, understated supporting turns from Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris And Timothy Spall.
7.) A film that, impressive though it often is and destined for cult status as it may well be, is basically two hours of watching someone have a nervous breakdown and thus scores a zero on the watch-again factor.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Suspiria
Black Type says
Very weird, in a good way. Like an intense fever dream.