Review: Diana (2013)

Cast

Diana, Princess of Wales:  Naomi Watts

Dr. Hasnat Khan:  Naveen Andrews

Dodi Fayed: Cas Anvar

Laurence Belcher as Prince William of Wales

Harry Holland as Prince Harry of Wales

Douglas Hodge as Paul Burrell

Geraldine James as Oonagh Toffolo

Charles Edwards as Patrick Jephson

I swore when this movie premiered that I would never watch this film. Does the world really need another movie about Diana, Princess of Wales? Well, never say never.  The film popped up on my Netflix front page as a recommended film.  Since I had nothing else to watch after the second season of HOUSE OF CARDS, I clicked on the poster and waited as the film downloaded to my NOOK.  Sort of like a palate cleanser after the Machiavellian shenanigans that went on in HOUSE OF CARDs.

I wish I could tell you that the film turned out to be better than I imagined, given my low expectations, but that would be a lie.  Seriously, it was like a Lifetime TV movie but with higher priced talent, and a bigger budget.  There is a reason that it only had like 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is based on Kate Snell's 2001 book Diana: Her Last Love about her relationship with the Pakistani heart surgeon, Dr. Hasnat Khan (which I haven’t read) and it plays like the worst kind of Harlequin romance novel.  The ones written in the early seventies.  The film opens with Diana getting into the elevator at the Ritz Hotel just before the car accident that takes her life.  It then flashes back to two years earlier with Diana (Naomi Watts) returning home from a royal engagement.  She quickly dismisses her staff for the evening, chucks off her shoes and turns on the radio.  After wandering aimlessly around Kensington Palace, she makes herself some beans on toast, and settles down to read her diary, practicing her lines for her interview with Martin Bashir.

Diana has a session with Oonagh Toffolo, an Irish acupuncturist, where she complains about her life.  When Oonagh’s husband has a heart attack; Diana rushes to the hospital to be with her.  Of course, she has a meet cute with Dr. Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), the heart surgeon on the case.  Diana is all downcast eyes and blushes; the film implies that it is love at first sight for the Princess.  She quickly comes up with all sorts of reasons to see him again. Hasnat is smitten as well but he’s much more realistic about the whole situation.  We are next treated to adorable scenes of Diana smuggling Hasnat into Kensington Palace in the trunk (or boot if you’re English) of her car, and sneaking off to meet him wearing a long, dark wig.  Since Hasnat digs jazz, so they spend an evening at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in the West End.  The loved up couple don’t share anything of significance in the film, no revelations about their pasts, what they are looking for in a relationship.  You know the little things that most couples talk about in the early stages of their relationship.

No in this celluloid romance, the biggest problem is that Diana has the baggage of well, you know, being the most famous woman in the world.   There are plenty of scenes of Hasnat not being able to deal with her celebrity, watching the Panorama interview at his local pub.  When the news leaks about their relationship, Diana calls a journalist she trusts, and refutes the story which ticks of Hasnat.  Diana, however, is determined to make the relationship work.  She flies to Pakistan solely to meet Hasnat’s family (without Hasnat), his mother gives Diana a crash course in the history of Pakistan, including Mountbatten’s role in it. As if Diana is personally responsible for the partition because she was married to Mountbatten’s great-nephew.   Art Malik shows up briefly to sit in a car with Hasnat while giving him advice. Later on, while on a trip to Italy, she meets up with renowned heart surgeon Dr. Christian Barnaard, and hits him up for a job for Hasnat in Boston.  Of course, Hasnat is upset that she would go behind his back, without even asking him.

  

In between sweet scenes of Diana and Hasnat being loved up, we have are given scenes of Diana doing her humanitarian work,  walking through fields dotted with land minds, breast-feeding an orphaned baby (okay, I made that one up), and finally offering her dresses up for charity. Angry at Hasnat for not paying enough attention to her, she flies off to take a cruise with Dodi Fayed.  Poor Dodi Fayed, he’s barely in this movie.  We never really know whether Diana was playing him to make Hasnat jealous, whether or not she really cared for him.  We are treated to her tipping off journalists to take photos of her on the yacht. In the end, she dramatically breaks it off with Hasnat before jetting off once again to spend time with Dodi. But her heart is still with her heart surgeon (according to the film), the film intimates that Diana tried to call Hasnat from Paris. 

In the end, the film is all smoke and mirrors signifying nothing.  Naomi Watts gives a valiant performance as Diana, clearly better than the film deserves.  She nails the shy glances, the breathy voice, and the steel beneath the fragile exterior.  This Diana is slightly manipulative and needy but not to any great extent. Watts plays the role as part Marilyn Monroe, part Mother Theresa but we never really feel Diana’s pain.  Several biographers have suggested that Diana had a deep emotional hole, that she never truly felt loved, by her parents, by her husband, nor by James Hewitt.  We also never get to see her interact with Prince Charles, the young Princes, or indeed anyone of her family. Even Paul Burrell is just a bystander (so much for being her rock. Not in this film). It’s like this Diana exists in a bubble.  Naveen Andrews does his best with what I call the ‘magical brown person’ role.  His Hasnat Khan never seems to have any strong emotions, about Diana, about marrying her, about the press.  He’s just there, pretty much a cipher.  He shows the most emotion when he discovers that Diana tried to get him a job in Boston behind his back.

I believe that there is a film or a miniseries just waiting to be made about Diana, taking her from a young bride to the end of her life (preferably based on Tina Brown’s book) but this is not it. There are scenes in this film that make no sense.  For example, Diana shows up at the opera house, looking incredibly glamorous, with the paparazzi snapping photos.  Later we see her inside the opera house talking on the phone to Prince William but there is no one there. Did the call take place after the opera was over? Has no one else arrived yet? Then later on, there are scenes when Diana is traveling in Australia, where Paul Burrell is seen shepherding her through paparazzi. Umm, why would her butler be traveling with her? Even Prince Charles doesn't take his butler with him when he travels. 

If the movie comes on television, or you see it at the library, and you have nothing else to do, then take a quick glance. Otherwise, don't bother.

Scoundel of the Month - Royal Cad: James Hewitt

As I watched the royal wedding coverage last week, there were the usual suspects amongst the commentators, Tina Brown (now Editor in Chief of Newsweek), Ingrid Seward (MAJESTY Magazine), Robert Jobson and Katie Nicholls (Daily Mail). But who else should turn up like the proverbial bad penny? Why, it’s James Hewitt cashing in on the royal wedding by sitting down to have a chat with INSIDE EDITION. Yes, the same man that Princess Diana famously declared in the PANORAMA interview, “I adored him, I loved him but I was very let down.”


The ‘comeback cad’ as he’s been dubbed by the tabloid press cheekily gave the royal couple his approval. He also promoted the lavish Royal-themed day complete with a big screen TV showing the ceremony at his bar The Polo House at Marbella, Spain where he’s been living since 2007. “I think it’s great William thought long and hard about the decision. They tend to these things more sensibly these days. I haven’t gotten around to sending them a letter yet but I suspect I will,’ he told INSIDE EDITION. I’m sure that William and Kate are waiting with bated breath to get that letter. In reference to William and Harry he added, “I don’t keep in touch with the boys. I tend to have moved on and I look on my life in a slightly different way.”

Seriously I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw things at my TV when he said that. Hewitt, who is now almost 53, has been living off his five year affair with the Princess of Wales ever since he retired from the army 17 years ago. After the driving range he opened failed, he not only collaborated with Anna Pasternak on the execrable PRINCESS IN LOVE for which he was paid $300,000, but he also gave an exclusive interview in the tabloid The News of the World is said to have brought him almost $2 Million. Since then he’s written two other memoirs where he shared further titillating tidbits about their affair. Called ‘the Love Rat,’ his revelations made him persona non grata amongst their social set. Hewitt tried to rejuvenate his reputation by appearing on various reality TV shows over the years (Wikipedia has a list of all the shows. You can them out here). Heck, it was a way to make a living; although he turned down an offer to do I’m A Celebrity, Get Me out of Here. One could almost admire him for pulling himself up by his bootstraps and trying to turn his life around.

But it was his attempt to sell 64 handwritten letters from Diana for $10 million in 2002 that really turned the media and the establishment against him. Hewitt claimed that they were ‘important historical documents,’ and that he ‘couldn’t afford to keep them anymore.’ Both Christies and Sotheby’s auction house refused to have anything to do with the sale. When he was asked if he felt that he was betraying the Princess, Hewitt said, ‘I don’t think I’ve betrayed her. I was utterly faithful to her when she was alive. I’ve been utterly faithful since she sadly is no longer with us.’ Apparently he has a different idea of what faithful means than other people. Even Prince Charles has been more faithful to Diana's memory than this guy.

He made an appearance on Larry King Live where he claimed that his affair with the Princess did Prince Charles a favor because it took the heat off his own relationship with Camilla. “I think Charles was probably grateful someone was looking after his wife,” he admitted to Larry King. He dug the hole deeper by admitting that “I’d like the letters to go for as much as they could possibly get.” When he was asked how Diana’s children felt about his selling such personal letters, he spat back: “I wouldn’t tell them what to do with their own private property and I don’t expect them to tell me either.” Ooh, Mr. Sensitive! (FYI- He was never able to sell the letters, and now he claims that he never will).

If it hadn’t been for his affair with Princess Diana, Hewitt’s life might have taken a different turn. Hewitt was a war veteran with 17 years of service in the Life Guards, a Calvary regiment charged with guarding the Sovereign. The grandson and son of army officers, he was born in 1958, 3 years before the late Princess. Although not a scholar, he seems to have shined only in the saddle, Hewitt went to Sandhurst, before being commissioned in the Life Guards. He met the Princess at a party in Mayfair in 1986. After only five years of marriage and 2 children, her marriage to Prince Charles was in trouble. They had just famously spent 39 days apart at the time that she met James Hewitt. In 1987 Diana hired him as a riding instructor for both her and the two young princes. The affair lasted five years until 1992 when Hewitt was posted to Germany and was no longer readily available.

Claiming that there was nothing left for him in Britain, Hewitt fled to the sunnier shores of Marbella. The more sordid truth is that Hewitt had been arrested for possession of cocaine (He was later let off with a caution) and had a rather nasty run with the Inland Revenue for failing to file his taxes for several years. According to the Daily Mail four years ago he was said to owe £2.2 million in outstanding tax to the Inland Revenue, with another £500,000 in accrued interest and surcharges, although Hewitt suggested the figure was 'nonsense' and that his debt was 'more like a hundredth of that'. Anyway, now Hewitt says he has settled it. Then there was the incident where it was revealed that he’d signed up with an online service called Sugardaddie.com, where he sent explicit pictures of himself to strangers. After several years under the harsh Marbella sun, he now suffers now from hyperpigmentation.

Watching him on INSIDE EDITION last week, one could almost feel sorry for the man. Hewitt, the once dashing army officer with a full head of red hair and a well-muscled body, now looks like a rather sad aging roué. He talked of how he considered shooting himself on a trip to France after the end of his affair with Diana. It was only his mother’s insistence on traveling with him that changed his mind. He insists that he still misses her. “I think we all miss her,” he said. “But I’ve tried to move on with my life.” Yeah, he’s moved on unless there’s money involved. Then he’s quite happy to talk about their relationship ad nauseum. And then there is the Harry rumor which will never go away no matter how often Hewitt denies it (he actually seemed surprised that the reporter from INSIDE EDITION brought it up).

Look, on the one hand, why shouldn’t he make money off his relationship since everyone else who worked for Diana has done so, including Ken Wharfe, her royal protection officer, and Patrick Jephson her former press secretary. Not to mention Paul Burrell, her ‘rock’ who has made a career out of being her former butler. The difference is they just worked for Diana. Hewitt's revelations seem more like a betrayal because the relationship was so much more intimate, they were in love. He comes across as smarmy instead of sincere.

Most important of all: An officer and a gentleman does not kiss and tell.

Sources: The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, BBC News

Princess Diana Exhibit

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia has mounted a new exhibition on Princess Diana that opens October 2nd.
From October 2 through December 31, 2009, the
National Constitution Center will host the international traveling exhibition, Diana: A Celebration, providing an opportunity for visitors to learn more about the life and work of
the Princess of Wales.

From the press release:

"Making its East Coast debut, and returning to the United States for the first time since 2007, the award-winning exhibition explores Diana's childhood, her engagement to HRH
Prince Charles, their royal wedding, their children, and Diana's life and work as a global humanitarian and model citizen. Diana: A Celebration is on loan from the Althorp Estate,
the Spencer Family’s 500-year-old ancestral home in England."

“This exhibition is a remarkable tribute to Princess Diana’s life and work,” said National Constitution Center President and CEO Linda E. Johnson. “Because she was admired by millions across the globe, we expect Diana: A Celebration to have broad appeal, which will allow the Center to expand its audience and, in turn, introduce more visitors to the remarkable stories of ‘We the People’ celebrated here every day.”

Covering 10,000 square feet, Diana: A Celebration features over 150 artifacts organized
into nine galleries: Childhood, Spencer Women, Engagement, Royal Wedding, Tiara
Gallery, Style & Fashion, Her Work, Tribute, and Condolences.

Highlights include:

Diana’s royal wedding gown, diamond tiara, veil, 25-ft. train, shoes, parasol, and
bridesmaid’s dress
28 dresses, suits, and gowns designed by Versace, Valentino, Chanel, and Azagury, among others, worn by Diana during her public life
Musical score and handwritten lyrics of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin composition
dedicated to Diana and adapted from “Candle in the Wind”
Original heritage, 17th and 18th century family paintings from the Althorp Estate
The original, hand-edited text of Charles Spencer’s moving tribute to his sister, delivered at Diana’s funeral in Westminster Abbey
Home movies of Diana’s childhood, historical artifacts, personal letters, photos, and heirlooms

Tickets go on sale today and are pretty-pricey, $23 dollars. You can save money by joining the National Constitution Center for $35 and the ticket is free. I'm hoping to attend on October 13 so that I can also attend Tina Brown's lecture that evening.