Naveen Andrews as Hasnat Khan and Naomi Watts as the Princess of Wales in "Diana," directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
“Diana,” opening Friday, is the first time the late Princess of Wales has been fully portrayed in a film. And, as befits its subject, it arrives with controversy, sincerity and conflict.
This is not a look at Buckingham Palace passion and politics. There’s no Prince Charles, and only a glimpse of Princes William and Harry. The woman of the title, played by Naomi Watts, and her emotions rule the day.
Also merely glimpsed is the jet-setting relationship with Dodi Fayed, who perished with Diana in a Paris car crash while being chased by paparazzi the night of Aug. 31, 1997. The film’s crux is Diana’s nearly two-year love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (“Lost’s” Naveen Andrews), who she met in a London hospital in 1995.
Khan has said the film “lies,” despite his family’s involvement and filmmakers using Khan’s testimony to Scotland Yard in its inquiry after Diana’s death.
Then the British press took the film to pieces when it was released there last month. Yet director Oliver Hirschbiegel says the film, adapted from Kate Snell’s book “Diana: Her Last Love,” is first and foremost a love story, one he likens to the classic 1945 British film “Brief Encounter.”
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“Her story was a fairy tale [that became] like a Greek tragedy,” says Hirschbiegel. “Diana and Hasnat loved each other, yet they couldn’t make it work.
“It became clear people recall her for being difficult, helicopters flying over a playboy’s yacht, then the terrible accident. That alone is good reason to tell this story.”
In addition to the inquiry and Snell’s 2000 nonfiction account, screenwriter Stephen Jeffreys and others on the production spoke with Diana’s former secretary Patrick Jephson; her spiritual adviser, Oonagh Toffolo, and her friend Simone Simmons, all of whom are portrayed in the film.
“We talked to people who had even just one encounter with Diana,” says Hirschbiegel.
Buckingham Palace, unsurprisingly, gave no aid to the film, nor has commented since its release.
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Though William and Harry are seen briefly boarding a helicopter, Fayed arrives in the film after Diana and Khan have split up due to Khan’s family’s resistance and his own reservations about her fame.
“She was very isolated at that time,” says Hirschbiegel. “Some accounts say she and Dodi never had sex, though that can’t be proven, of course. Which is why I show what we know: them on his boat, on the phone. We know he had a drug addiction, but I didn’t want to get into that, out of respect.”
More prominent, and new, is Diana’s spiritual side.
“For me, it was important to get that aspect of her into it,” says Hirschbiegel. “We find little of that in writing, not even in Snell’s book. But it’s from Simmons and Toffolo. It’s between the lines [in many scenes], but it’s there.”
To delve into Khan’s side, Hirschbiegel consulted with his family in Pakistan. (Khan is still based in England.) Yet the doctor reportedly trashed the film based on trailers.
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“It’s strange, because we’ve been in touch with the family throughout, and no one ever objected to things in Snell’s book,” says Hirschbiegel. “I understand it’s tough — his heart was broken. But I wish he’d have watched the film and then said something, not just comment on pictures or clips.
“The Hasnat Khan in the film is really what you’d call a cool guy. He’s kind of a man’s man, with a passion, goals and gravity. What people told me of him and how he spoke in the inquest made me create a [portrait] on screen.
“I just wish he’d see it. I’d be surprised if he didn’t like what he saw, really.”
The British press has most definitely not liked what they saw.
“They just don’t seem to want it at all,” says Hirschbiegel, who says he “smirked” at the reviews.
“It’s such an open wound, still. The irony is, what the [papers] put their fingers on — the way Diana talks, the melodramatic aspects of her life — was very much a part of her, and one reason those papers hit at her when she was alive. They made fun of her. Now they’re doing that with the film.
“The only way they would’ve accepted the film, probably, is if it had more sarcasm and cynicism. But that’s not the way I did it. I’m not English, I’m German!”
jneumaier@nydailynews.com
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