There has been a flurry of cinematic releases concerning the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in recent months, with the arrival of 2021’s Spencer, which saw Kristen Stewart nominated for an Oscar, season four of Netflix's The Crown plus Diana: The musical, which is now available to watch on the streaming platform, after original debuting on broadway. It appears that audiences can’t get enough of creative reimaginings and explorations into the royal’s short, but incredibly rich life.
The latest addition to the archive of content is new HBO documentary The Princess, which opened the virtual Sundance Film Festival in May and ‘aims to explore our complicity in Diana’s tragic death’. From the BAFTA award-winning producers of Man on the Wire, Sugarman and LA 92, comes a 104-minute film using solely archival footage.
As the world’s most photographed woman of her time, it can be assumed that director Ed Perkins had plenty to work with during the project’s production. Entirely made up of real-time content, from pictures and news clips to audio recordings and interviews with Diana and the Prince of Wales, the retrospective rejects common documentary conventions, such as talking-head interviews and narration.
The trailer for The Princess depicts a chilling arrangement of camera flashes, intrusive journalists and paparazzi, displaying the excessive media hype the princess endured during her time as a member of the Royal Family. Over the imagery, quotes can be heard from various news reporters and interviewers, making statements such as, ‘the collapse of this marriage is giving the British media little else to talk about’, ‘the princess has been the best thing for the monarchy in decades - and he’s [Prince Charles] taking second place’ and ‘it's the media that’s causing the problems'.
Perkins told US Today Entertainment that, ‘I hope (this film) gives a more complex understanding of both Diana and the relationship we still have with the Royal Family, as mediated by the press. In many ways, some of the tensions and fault lines that still exist in that relationship can be traced back to Diana’.
The director went on to state: ‘The day Diana died, I was 11 years old and I remember being woken up by my parents, who were really emotional about it in a way I found surprising. There was this national wave of grief and mourning I had never seen up to that point and I don't think I've ever seen since. Adults were grieving this person as if she was their own mother or daughter’.
The film will explore the period from Diana’s 1981 engagement to Charles to the princess’s death in 1997. Princess Diana died from the injuries she sustained in a car crash in Paris, aged just 36. Following her death, the nation was flung into a period of unexpected mourning, with floral tributes to the royal reaching 30 feet from the entrance of Kensington Palace.
The Princess will be in cinemas from 30 June across the UK and Ireland. It aired on Sky on 14 August and is available to watch On Demand.
