“Maria” - Film Review
Director Pablo Larraín has created an unofficial trilogy in Jackie, Spencer, and now Maria. All these films are centered on historical women who have been chewed up and spit out by the public. Jackie was Jackie Kennedy’s story, Spencer was Princess Diana’s, and Maria is about opera singer Maria Callas. There is power in a name, and it’s evident in the way Larraín titles each of the films about these women. They all speak to a reclamation of their humble humanity. People know them as larger-than-life personas, but rarely are they seen as actual people. They’re representatives of ideals, something for people to rally behind or against, and rarely in control of their own narrative. Maria seeks to change that and give the spotlight to the famed singer one last time.
Maria takes place during the week leading up to the death of Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie). She’s self-medicating with various prescription pills and spends much of her time in her Paris apartment. Maria’s only friends/confidants are her butler, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher). Maria has spent most of her life being known for her voice, but it’s failing her. She hasn’t been on a stage in four years and only performs in her kitchen to Bruna and her two dogs. A voice coach (Stephen Ashfield) believes the diva still exists in Maria and encourages her to practice in the hope that she will return to the stage.
Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024.
Like Spencer, Maria is not, nor is it claiming to be, a one-hundred-percent-accurate period piece. Spencer opened with the text “a fable based on a true story.” While a similar note is not put in front of Maria, there’s no need. It’s apparent from the jump that Maria’s state of mind is far from well, and she’s heavily reliant on a drug called Mandrax. That drug is personified by a filmmaker (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is interviewing Maria about her life. Maria becomes unreliable as an interviewer and an interviewee, often making it difficult to know if moments are real or imagined. Surprisingly, Maria has a lot in common with Smile 2. Both have a struggling singer at the center whose perceptions of reality are extremely warped. Of course, Maria is nowhere near as bloody as Smile 2, but the two share the same critiques on fame and what we, as an audience, expect from our divas.
Because of Maria’s less-than-traditional approach to the biopic genre, some may feel the film doesn’t give enough of an explanation about her life and the circumstances that led to her early death. Maria doesn’t need to show the audience every single frame of this woman’s life in order for them to understand how much opera means to her and how devastating it is that she may never perform again. What do you do when the thing you love is also what’s killing you? It’s a question that anyone who turns their passion into their career has asked themself at some point. It’s a question that Maria is endlessly turning over and over in her mind. People try to ease her worries by telling her that even if she never sets foot on a stage again, her voice lives on in recordings. It’s not the balm they intend it to be. Maria despises her records because they’re “perfect,” but to her, the beauty of opera and performing is that it lives and dies on the stage in the moment it’s performed. It’s meant to be an explosion of emotions that cannot be replicated.
Cr. Pablo Larraín/Netflix © 2024.
Jolie’s performance as Maria Callas is utterly remarkable. Maria is the kind of role that is once-in-a-lifetime, and Jolie arrived ready for the challenge. From the opening montage of Maria singing as images of her rise to fame flit by, it’s clear that Jolie has command of the screen. There’s a deep subtlety to her performance that worms its way beneath the skin of the audience. They see Maria as a diva, but also as a woman who is struggling to find her life again off the stage. Jolie won an Oscar in 2000 for Girl, Interrupted and was last nominated in 2009 for Changeling. It seems all but confirmed that she will find herself on the nominee list again this year, but she’s got steep competition coming from Demi Moore in The Substance and Mikey Madison in Anora. Performances like these make the kind of year movie lovers dream about.
Maria has quickly become one of the year’s best, and it’s a career high for Jolie, but she didn’t do it alone. The cast surrounding her is equally magnificent. The entire world created by Larraín feels magical, yet grounded, and allows for a rich text to unfold. Maria is one last, beautiful look at the woman who spent years in the spotlight, and her desire to find her peace.
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