The most accessible of Pablo Larrain’s three biopics including Jackie and Spencer with a stunning lead performance from Angelina Jolie.
Plot: Famed opera singer Maria Callas retreats to Paris in the 1970s after a glamorous yet tumultuous life in the public eye.
Review: Pablo Larrain’s loose trilogy about famous twentieth-century women, beginning with 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, comes to a close with Maria. Based on the life of revered opera singer Maria Callas, Larrain’s biopic focuses on the least recognizable of the three women. That Callas’ notoriously short life is not as easily remembered compared to Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana affords Maria the ability to examine the singer’s life from a vantage point that is less sterile and distant than the previous two films. With a direct connection to Jackie, Maria retains some of the languid pacing and uneven creative choices that prevented Larrain’s prior biopics from being as strong as they could have been. However, after solid performances from Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart, Angelina Jolie delivers a stunning and achingly beautiful performance as Maria Callas, which will surely rank as one of the best of the year and career.
Rather than tell a linear story or a complete biography, Maria centers on the final days of Maria Callas’s life (Angelina Jolie). Born in New York and raised in Athens, Greece, Callas became the most famous opera singer of the century, with copious recordings available as a testament to her vocal range. Maria focuses on the singer’s solitary life in 1973, living in relative seclusion in Paris with her butler, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and housemaid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher). Addicted to multiple medications, Maria deals with daily hallucinations and frail health as she imagines interviews with a documentary filmmaker named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Callas also attempts to revive her singing voice with aid from conductor Jeffrey Tate (Stephen Ashfield), despite warnings from doctors. As Maria contemplates her own mortality, she confides in Mandrax about her life, notably her affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer).
Maria is full of musical recreations, most lip-syncing by Angelina Jolie. Jolie trained for seven months to hone her skills in singing opera, but the sheer talent of Maria Callas required the use of her actual voice. Towards the film’s end, Angelina Jolie’s voice is heard, which lends some realism to the musical moments. Outside of one scene set during her childhood, most of Maria centers on Callas in her thirties through her untimely death at the age of fifty-three. We meet her older sister, Yakinthi (Valeria Golino), but most of the screen time is shared between Callas and her servants, who are also her closest friends. Flashbacks connect Callas with the love of her life, Aristotle Onassis, despite the business magnate’s marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy. While Jackie is never seen, Larrain does orchestrate a full circle connection to his 2016 film with a scene featuring John F. Kennedy, once again played by Caspar Phillipson. JFK and a distant view of Marilyn Monroe are the sole celebrities whose names are checked in the film.
Angelina Jolie’s acting roles have been sparse in the last five years, limited to voice work and roles in Taylor Sheridan’s Those Who Wish Me Dead and Chloe Zao’s Eternals, but Maria is the actress’ most powerful performance in years and possibly her entire career. Rarely raising her voice in the entire film, Jolie fills every scene with a presence and stature that hints at the emotional turmoil the singer struggles with inside her own mind. Adopting a transatlantic accent that hides her New York City or Greek upbringing, this is not an in-your-face portrayal but instead a controlled and measured one that erupts when Callas begins to sing. This film is full of quiet moments that rest on the give-and-take that Maria Callas has with everyone in her life. Her repeated requests of Ferruccio to move her grand piano from room to room or refusal to listen to her recorded performances add quirks to Callas. At the same time, her chess-like conversations with her doctor and Onassis himself represent the strength that Maria Callas had through judgment from critics and fans alike at her sudden career downturn.
Director Pablo Larrain reunited with his Spencer screenwriter Steven Knight for Maria and the chemistry they forged allows for this film to feel more fluid and natural than that 2021 film. Maria still boasts surreal visuals evoking Maria Callas’ memories and hallucinations, which are augmented by Larrain’s penchant for off-kilter editing and the use of visual styles to shift perspective. Much of Maria shifts from black-and-white to sepia film footage and multiple aspect ratios as it moves through five decades of Callas’ life. Clocking in at just about two hours, Maria moves at a better pace than either Jackie or Spencer and is a more engaging and accessible story despite being about the least familiar of the three subjects. The sung sequences are the weakest part of Maria, a surprise for a film about a music icon, but it may be that Angelina Jolie’s measured performance just does not match the range of the actual Callas.
Angelina Jolie’s performance is stunning in its restraint as the actress conveys a remarkable range of emotions, even as her character barely controls her mental and physical deterioration. The film’s final scene is heartbreakingly powerful, something I wish I could say about the entire film. Pablo Larrain’s ultra-specific approach to this trilogy of biopics has been hit-or-miss as the director often tries to convey visually what he fails to relate through the protagonists’ performances and vice versa. Maria is the best of Larrain’s three films, thanks to Angelina Jolie, who deserves all of the acclaim coming her way. Maria, unfortunately, does not match the heights of Jolie’s performance. I knew little of Maria Callas as a singer before seeing this film, and I know little more after watching this film. Still, Maria does offer a haunting look into the last days of a beloved icon that will hopefully introduce a new generation to her singular voice.
Maria is now streaming on Netflix.
