I found this a most remarkable film - not least as it was not at all what I expected. Deeply weird. cinematically creative and originally imaginative and attention-holding.
Its not, really, in any traditional sense a film about Diana - she is, to a degree, who is represented by the remarkable Kristen Stewart (Oscar-performance material?)
The ostensible setting - a weekend at Sandringham - is the cue for a psychodrama to be enacted by the central character. There are a few scenes with clear traditional dialogue - a brief one with Charles’s telling D that he hopes she will actually eat some food and not vomit it up (!) but in most of the film we are in D’s head with her emotions in a whirl, lurching back and forth between reality and fantasy/past and present and so gradually building up a picture of someone on the brink of collapse, culminating in a scene at a pheasant shoot that is at once both powerful moving and utterly absurd and implausible. Its odd that with this combination of characteristics that the scene (and indeed the whole film) does actually ‘work’. I was completely drawn into this bizarre world, of D’s mind and the world of Sandringham with the cold, watching figures that peopled it. And we barely see the Royal family but are powerfully aware of their constant and powerful presence.
Music played an important role in the film. For much of it the accompanying soundtrack gave an edgy and uncomfortable feel to all that we saw with the music itself being, to my ears, something that rather put me on edge, but this was occasionally, and very effectively, use of more familiar and enjoyable music which gave a striking contrast to what we had heard before and to what we seeing on the screen. This music was a central and integral part of the film and most effectively used.
The other, major, element was fantasy and at a number of times, we saw scenes that we (or I, at least) were not sure if they were real or fantasy - but all the more effective, and often powerful ad moving, for all that. I particularly loved the weirdly fantastic dance sequence that we saw where D moved from style to style, to new costume to new costume, from one location to another…It sounds weird to describe but, take it from me, in the terms and context of the film, it really worked well.
Yes, at times, the symbolism was clunking - the dead pheasants on the road at the start, D asking, when being told that she was late, asking ‘will they kill me?’ - but not enough to seriously mar the whole film. I think critics got too bogged down with those aspects in many of their responses.
There were also a few humorous touches as well - not least one of the final shots with the important scarecrow - see the film and you will understand. And the scenes with her children were the most direct and unvarnished of all - necessarily so, I think - although again, some of their comments were rather heavy-handed; ‘Mummy, who are you so sad’!!!
I think with this film you need to just surrender to it and take it for what it is; if you go to it expecting anything traditional e.g. a biographical film or whatever, then you will be disappointed and baffled - perhaos annoyed. But just give yourselves over to it and let it work.