Between “The Crown,” Kristen Stewart in “Spencer” and tabloid culture’s insatiable hunger for all things royal, viewers would be forgiven for thinking one more documentary about Princess Diana is gratuitous at best — or, being timed to the 25th anniversary of her death , morbidly opportunistic at worst. But “The Princess,” Ed Perkins’s absorbing, thoughtful documentary, might be the film we’ve been waiting for all along. Eschewing the usual conceits of talking heads, voice-overs and bio-fiction narrative tropes, Perkins simply assembles images from Diana’s life, entirely gleaned from archival footage. Those clips — her fairy-tale courtship with Prince Charles, their “wedding of the century,” the ensuing troubled marriage and breakup, her transformation from fey English rose to paparazzi catnip and, finally, her martyrdom at the hands of the media they both hid from and masterfully manipulated — build into something sad, sobering and surprisingly profound. Interrogating Diana as the “people’s princess” — a moniker that comes to have a discomfiting double meaning by the end of the film — Perkins’s essay becomes less about the mythologized icon of the title and more about celebrity, fandom and the public’s complicity in Diana’s misery and eventual destruction. “The Princess” might be the most poignant depiction of a figure who will always remain just out of reach; it’s definitely the most on-point, even at its most obliquely damning. TV-14. Available on HBO and HBO Max. Contains mature thematic elements. 109 mins. – AH
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