A character study rather than biopic, Pablo Larraín’s Maria showcases Oscar winner Angelina Jolie’s acting prowess, capturing the opera singer’s dramatic highs and lows with captivating intensity and emotional depth. Told in three distinct acts, Maria is a bold reimagining of the latter years in Callas’ life – emphasis on “reimagining.” Those familiar with the soprano’s dramatic vocal style and mesmerizing performances will find writer Steven Knight’s take more fulfilling, while those new to her work may find the narrative less accessible.
Maria shuns the banner of realism, preferring a more fantastical approach. The drama focuses on the week prior to her death on September 16, 1977, with the retired singer attempting to rediscover the voice that made her famous. Flashbacks fill in the years when she was a hot ticket. But Larraín’s film doesn’t simply insert scenes from Callas’ past to fill out the narrative. Instead, Knight’s screenplay takes an unusual approach to revealing Callas’ strong personality and addiction to pills.
Larraín’s Maria imagines that over the course of her final week, Callas had multiple meetings with a television crew to discuss her life and career. The crew is a figment of her drug-addled imagination. To make it crystal clear this is all inside her head, her interviewer (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog) is named Mandrax. (The film repeatedly shows Maria’s daily reliance on Mandrax, a potent hypnotic, and other medication.)
Maria opens up about key events in her storied life, both in her young adult years and during the height of her fame. Some are true to life; others are fanciful interpretations of actual events. Her devoted butler Ferruccio and housemaid Bruna watch as she speaks out loud to the imaginary crew, telling Mandrax her innermost thoughts. She informs her two dedicated companions that from this point forward, what’s real and what’s not is her business, not theirs.
Maria walks the streets of Paris with just drugs as her companions. Gorgeous scenes of her soaking in the audience’s admiration intermingle with scenes from Maria’s tumultuous love life and early days forced to perform for Nazis. She stops by the opera house and takes the stage, with only a piano soloist as an accompanist. It’s not an audience that she needs to impress. No, at this point in her life she’s trying to rediscover her voice only for herself. She needs to find La Callas one last time.
Mandrax is her sounding board as she recalls her younger days and being the center of attention in every room she entered. She met the billionaire Aristotle Onassis at a party he hosted in her honor and left her husband to be his mistress. Onassis eventually chose Jackie Kennedy to be his bride, but it’s hinted that his marriage to JFK’s widow didn’t change his love for Maria Callas.
Maria tells the pianist that she wants to sing a love song for Onassis who, though dead, comes to her bed every night. Through haunting dialogue, screenwriter Steven Knight makes it clear that his version of Maria Callas understands that she’s lost touch with reality and that her health has deteriorated so much that she’s likely to die soon. She admits to a waiter she comes to restaurants to be adored, not to eat. And she tells the owner of a restaurant that she’s talking to herself because she’s writing her autobiography. Maria’s ownership of her declining mental and physical health is both devastating and healing.
Angelina Jolie went through extensive training to realistically portray the iconic singer. No one can replicate Callas’ voice, but director Pablo Larraín found a way around that by integrating Jolie and Callas’ voices into the musical numbers. When Callas is shown at the height of her career, it’s more Callas than Jolie’s voice. In the latter years after her career’s finished, the voice is more Jolie’s than Callas.
However, none of the vocal arrangements would work if Jolie couldn’t embody the dramatic, powerful stances and gestures of an opera singer; her physicality is key. Jolie committed to striking the right posture, to embodying Callas’ movements on stage, and to breathing deeply, mimicking the controlled breaths of an opera singer. More importantly, Jolie captured the palpable emotion in Callas’ performances, the almost tangible energy that flowed from the stage and over the audience.
The Oscar winner also brilliantly conveys Callas’ stinging temperament, capturing the sharp edge of her personality.
Maria’s closest companions and confidantes are her butler Ferruccio and maid Bruna, played by Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher. Favino and Rohrwacher ground the film and tether the movie’s version of Maria to reality. Fiercely loyal and protective, Ferruccio and Bruna are unable to save the diva from destroying herself. Favino and Rohrwacher are outstanding as Maria’s family by choice rather than by blood.
Once again, filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Spencer, Jackie) put together an impressive behind-the-scenes team, their expertise creating a visually stunning and technically impressive movie. The costumes are sumptuous, the production design is striking, and the sets are first-rate.
Maria begins and ends with La Divina dead on the floor of her Paris flat. The journey director Pablo Larraín and writer Steven Knight take us on between those scenes makes us wonder what Callas’ life was actually like in the week leading up to her death. We can hope it was as redemptive and healing as what Larraín and Knight have imagined.
GRADE: B
MPAA Rating: R for a sexual reference and some language
Running Time: 2 hours 3 minutes
Release Date: December 13, 2024 streaming
Studio: Netflix
The post ‘Maria’ Review: Angelina Jolie Dazzles in Pablo Larraín’s Haunting Callas Reimagining appeared first on ShowbizJunkies.
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