The Crown Season 6 Part 1 kicks off with a man walking his dog in Paris, when he hears a car crash. Yes, the infamous car crash that killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. It’s followed by events in flashback that led to the present day. While The Crown is a show that’s best viewed through a retrospective lens, the new instalment makes for a rewarding watch that succinctly sets the past, the present, and the future in context.
(Also Read: The Crown creator Peter Morgan on show’s criticism: Judi Dench probably feels ‘rather stupid’)
Comment on paparazzi culture
The new season of The Crown trains its lens on the pervasive and persuasive paparazzi culture. It introduces the paparazzi like blood-thirsty sharks circling the Dodi yacht, which is hosting Diana. She poses in a swimwear in close proximity for them so that they leave her and her kids alone for once, but tasting the blood only makes them hungry for more.
Diana tends to attract the paparazzi because for what her therapist describes to her a “penchant for drama.” The harmless posturing turns into relentless hounding before she can realise. It’s no secret that Diana’s car crash took place when the photographers were following her. Hence, director Alex Gabassi, cinematographer Sophia Olssen, editor Richard Graham, and composer Martin Phipps treat all the chase sequences like they’re from an escape thriller. Diana and Dodi run away from the paparazzi as if they’re after their life. Ironically, that’s exactly what happens.
The best glimpse into this culture is captured in the second episode through a juxtaposition of an ace Italian paparazzo and the official portraitist of the British royal family. Both are introduced and profiled at the start of the episode, with each of them explaining why they do what they do, directly addressing the camera as if in a documentary, yet another form of photography. While the former claims the paparazzi are ‘hunters,’ and believe in being as famous as their subjects, the latter wants to stay in the shadows and maintain the dignity of his royal subjects. While one represents the “tabloid princess,” the other symbolises the “broadsheet prince.”
The scene where the Italian paparazzo captures Diana and Dodi kissing on his yacht is also conceived as one straight from a murder mystery. He’s commissioned to capture Diana and Dodi red-handed from the latter’s father as if he’s a hired assassin on duty. When he aims his long lens from a faraway boat on the couple, it feels like he’s a sniper ready to take his shot. And when he develops those reels in a lab soaked in red light, it feels like he has blood on his hands.
Loss of privacy is treated at par with loss of life here. Creator and writer Peter Morgan also uses the media and fan culture to comment on the gender divide on empathy. While women reporters ask Diana at a press conference only whether she’d ever marry again, the men grill her with questions like, “Is he a good kisser?” Similarly, the girls on the streets request Diana for a picture, while the boys demand a kiss.
Time capsule
The timeless perils of the paparazzi culture may lend The Crown contemporary relevance, but the show also serves as an evocative time capsule. From the placement of Nokia cellphones to Panasonic television sets, production designer Martin Childs pays attention to detail in order to establish the timeline of events concisely. He even establishes the difference in space, by juxtaposing the regal yet intimidating palaces and vintage rotary dial phones of the British royal family against the open and isolated yacht and cordless cellphones of Diana and Dodi. Pop culture references like George Michael’s music and a family screening of Jumanji also help to put a finger on the chronology.
Retrospective lens
In the opening few minutes of The Crown Season 6, a British royal family official refers to William as “the next king.” That rings a bell given the imminent coronation of Prince Williams as the king of England. The new season also projects William as an heir apparent, but also as a shy 15-year-old boy struggling with his parents’ separation, and eventually, his mother’s sudden demise.
By positioning Mohammed Al-Fayed Dodi as the malicious engineer of Diana and Dodi Fayed’s relationship, The Crown depicts the late movie moghul in evil colours. In fact, he even pitches his dialogues like he’s the mastermind villain in a Hollywood movie. But it’s to the credit of actor Salim Dau’s terrific nuance and Peter Morgan’s inclusive call to not treat Dodi as a collateral damage in his narrative that lends a lot of heft and dignity to this track.
One can’t say whether it’s owing to Queen Elizabeth II’s death that The Crown Season 6 doesn’t go all guns blazing on the Firm. Sure, Elizabeth and Prince Philip are shown as dismissive of Diana’s ways and decidedly cold in the aftermath of her death, there are ample instances that make the queen cut an empathetic figure. She takes time, but does turn around to genuinely mourn for Diana at the fag end of Season 6 Part 1.
Even a regret-wrecked Charles insists that he may have let Diana down in life, he wouldn’t do so in death. But the sincerity and depth of Dominic West can’t save the rather forcefitted prophecy of him saying Diana’s death is an ‘enormous’ event that ‘would change everything’. One can say that like the princess, Peter Morgan and the writers room of The Crown have a penchant for drama.
But if that allows for winks like these, one would rather not complain: When Diana tells Dodi she wants to run away, he suggests she moves to California, the land of movies that carved his identity. Decades later, a certain Hollywood actor Meghan Markle would complete that unfinished business by relinquishing royal duties to relocate to Los Angeles, California with her husband Harry, the younger son of Princess Diana. Oh, and they also have a producing deal with Netflix.
The Crown Season 6 Part 2 will premiere on Netflix on December 14.