With The Princess, director Ed Perkins delivers a riveting documentary on one of the most famous people of the last century and somehow manages to tell her story in a way viewers haven’t seen before.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, there is certainly no shortage of related content on the screen—from Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki jointly sharing the role in The Crown to Kristen Stewart‘s well-respected portrayal in Spencer, a Broadway musical, and the recent CNN docuseries Diana: In Her Own Words. With this impressive Sundance doc entry, Perkins brings something fresh to a story audiences have come to know very well.
Instead of presenting Diana’s life through standard talking-head interviews and newsreel footage, Perkins’ film is told exclusively through archival video footage. Be it professional news programs, paparazzi footage, or amateur video, the doc eschews traditional voice-over narration, leaving the images and the audio to speak for itself. Directed by Perkins and assembled by editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira, The Princess may lack voiceover and interviews, but its commentary speaks volumes.
Unidentified voices are presented within the context of the public’s fascination with Diana as a young woman on the cusp of engagement to the future king of England all the way to her tragic end in Paris in 1997. Some voices are reporters stating facts, others are her critics. The general public is also given a voice here, calling out tabloid reporters who have continuously fed them what they craved—information on the People’s Princess. One comment that stands out is from a fan left wondering if the press might leave Diana alone following her separation from Prince Charles. The footage then reveals what we already know—that the press obsession fairly doubled while the public appetite for news of the newly-single Princess just seemed to grow and grow.
While the narrative may be familiar, the point of view presented in The Princess is not. Instead of polished video, Perkins uses footage from inside throngs of photographers that all clambering for a shot of Lady Di. The film opens on another bit of footage from an unidentified group of travellers in Paris and it becomes immediately apparent that right off the bat we are witnessing what would be Diana and Dodi Al Fayed’s final moments, not through the news, but through a home video of someone who happened to be outside the Ritz on that fateful August night. Viewers will be familiar with this event and others, but these differing angles give new insight into how much the late princess was hounded, stalked, and surrounded on a daily basis.
Ultimately, The Princess serves as a time capsule, not exclusively of Diana, but of us and our ongoing interest in her. We are the ones who shaped the narrative of the fairy tale marriage, the gossipy soap opera that upended the palace, and finally, the tragic ending. If this doc shows us anything, it’s that our fascination with Diana hasn’t diminished, even 25 years later.
The Princess screens as part of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and will debut on HBO Max in the U.S. and on HBO and Crave in Canada in 2022.
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