“I am happy with the theater behind my eyes,” muses opera singer Maria Callas in Maria, yet another fascinating biopic from Pablo Larraín (Jackie, Spencer). Audiences will be moved by what takes place in Callas’ vivid imagination, too. The movie, which tracks the final week of the world's greatest opera singer’s life as depicted by Angelina Jolie in a career-defining role, is a visual feast to behold as it floats between the world inside Callas’ colorful mind and her “real life.” It’s a breathtaking film which plays out thematically like the tragic operas Callas so ignited with ravenous wonder.
This is Larraín's third intimate look at a 20th-century female icon, following 2016’s Jackie, which took us inside the life of Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and 2021’s Spencer, which featured Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) combating mental health issues at Christmastime while the Royal Family bopped about. Both films delivered effective portraits of phenomenal women during pivotal junctures in their lives, and Maria continues that trend in a triumphant trilogy about powerful women and their melancholy.
In Maria, which was recently screened at the Chicago International Film Festival and met with rousing applause, what’s most at stake, aside from the singer’s sanity, is whether Callas can find the strength to reclaim her powerful voice, which has fractured due to a combination of illnesses and personal dilemmas. Fittingly, the scenes which find the singer — and in turn, Jolie — attempting to push through the gut-wrenching heartache of immense personal loss are the most haunting and believable. And Jolie commands the screen, turning in a powerful, award-worthy performance.
Maria Blends Melodrama with Humor
Pablo Larraín (Jackie, Spencer) directs this biographical psychological drama film about opera singer Maria Callas, focusing on the final stretch of her life in Paris.
- Release Date
- November 27, 2024
- Cast
- Angelina Jolie , Pierfrancesco Favino , Alba Rohrwacher , Haluk Bilginer , Kodi Smit-McPhee , Valeria Golino , Stephen Ashfield , Alessandro Bressanello , Vincent Macaigne , Lydia Korniordou , Rebecka Johnston , Botond Bartus , Marcell Lengyel , Philipp Droste , Jeremy Wheeler , Luca Gréta Felhalmi , Zora Gerda Fejes , Kay Madsen , Toma Hrisztov , Christiana Aloneftis , Aggelina Papadopoulou
- Runtime
- 123 Minutes
- Angelina Jolie gives a career-defining performance.
- An intimate look at fame, melancholy, aging, womanhood, and death.
- Beautifully directed and thematically powerful conclusion to Pablo Larrain's trilogy.
- The film is a bit overly melodramatic and fatalistic despite some good moments of levity.
Maria begins on the day of the revered American-born Greek soprano’s death in September 1977. She’s collapsed on the floor of her lavish Paris lair and the mood is certainly solemn. Soon enough, the film backtracks to a week prior, where most of the events leading up to her inevitable death play out, although deeper dives into the past are presented whenever Callas is recalling key moments in her life.
For that, there’s a fine mix of black-and-white photography and faded sepia tone-like imagery offered to establish a certain mood both in the past and present. From these cues, we concur that Callas’ past was far richer and crisper, while in real time, most things appear and feel to be, like her voice, fading away.
10 All-Time Best Angelina Jolie Movies, Ranked
One of the all-time best actors to grace the big screen, here are Angelina Jolie's best-ever movies.
Much like Spencer, the protagonist has two allies accompanying her on a journey. In Spencer, it was Princess Diana’s sons, William and Harry, to whom she was deeply devoted. In Maria, it’s Feruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), Callas’ butler/chauffeur, and her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher). Together, these three characters create an effective and oftentimes moving emotional trifecta, offering the most levity in the story as well as providing a more realistic glimpse at a fading icon.
Feruccio and Bruna are, in fact, Callas’ true family at this point in her life; the ones she repeatedly turns to during manic episodes and even lighthearted asides. One running gag finds the eccentric singer instructing Feruccio on where to move her treasured piano in any given room — again and again. These sorts of things become key tonal shifts, lifting the film beyond pure fatalistic melodrama.
Angelina Jolie in an Award-Worthy Performance
As our story unfolds, we find Callas occasionally arriving at a theater to practice singing, while her vocal coach (Stephen Ashfield) encourages her. But she’s far from patient. She struggles to find the notes and richness she once had; she’s 53 at this point and hasn’t sung in public in years. The film creates a steady narrative tracking Callas’ angst while also giving her somebody to talk to, at least in her mind.
For that, we have a television reporter (Kodi Smit-McPhee of The Power of the Dog and Memoir of a Snail), whose name is “Mandrax,” the suppressant drug that Callas has been abusing and which has complicated other aspects of her physical health. The screenwriter supplies Jolie with some of the best lines with Mandrax, Feruccio, and Bruna. “I'm not hungry,” Callas purrs during an excursion to town. “I come to restaurants to be adored.” Bravo.
The Best Musical Biopics, Ranked
These are some of the best biopics about iconic musicians that are told in the form of a great movie musical to tell the stories of lives and careers.
If you’re wondering how effectively the filmmaker captures Callas performing on stage, through flashback moments, we experience her commanding attention in front of packed opera houses performing the works of Verdi, Puccini, or Verdi, the celebrated 19th-century composers who helped solidify her career. These are epic scenes, perfectly capturing a rare force of nature. There's an eerie delight in witnessing Jolie use her entire body as a "vehicle" while she lip-syncs Callas' work.
Maria Hits All the Right Notes
Expect other key characters to filter in as Callas recalls her life and what's at stake for her in the present to the "TV journalist." Of course, there's the deep love she and Aristotle Onassis shared (forming a weird connection with Larrain's Jackie). Played here by Haluk Bilginer, the pair make for believable lovers. There's some fun in watching Callas interact with a smarmy JFK (Caspar Phillipson), whose wife Jackie, of course, later lands in Onassis' arms. It offers yet another glimpse of Callas as a strong woman, fully her own. She's somebody desperate to control her own destiny, which is what makes everything in real time all the more shaky, because Callas is losing grip on her own life. And her fate.
That is one of the things that makes Maria so uniquely different from Jackie and Spencer. By the end of those stories, the characters have somewhere to go and a destination point, at which they have hope to rebuild. That isn't the case here (which arguably makes it a good conclusion to a trilogy). And while that doesn't mar the competence of the storytelling on display in Maria, it does, by its very nature, somewhat dampen the overall vibe of the film, drowning it in doom.
Beyond that, it'd be hard to ask for a more expertly executed story by filmmaker Pablo Larraín, or a more engrossing performance by Angelina Jolie. Maria packs an emotional punch. Jolie's performance will stay with you long after you leave the theater. The film is a triumph and a fully immersive fever dream that hits all the right high notes. Maria will be released in theaters November 27, and can be streamed on Netflix December 11.
Comments
Post a Comment