Maria
Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s latest unconventional film biography.
Angelina is Maria
Image courtesy of StudioCanal.
What I find surprising about Pablo Larraín’s Maria is not that critical opinion has been so divided but that any critic could consider it a good film. That is not to say that this drama centred on the great operatic singer Maria Callas is devoid of any worthwhile qualities at all. The look of it is fine and a credit to the photographer Ed Lachman and also to Guy Hendrix Dyas the production designer and Massimo Cantini Parrini the costume designer. It is also the case that the actress in the title role, Angelina Jolie, has studied how Callas looked and moved and captures her demeanour. However, her endeavours are less rewarding than they should be due to the film’s major flaws.
As on Larraín's preceding biopic about Princess Diana, Spencer (2021), the writer here is Steven Knight and the failure of the film stems from two things: the ineptitude of much of the dialogue which is at times risible and the misjudgements apparent in the way that the concept behind the film is handled. Maria starts with the death of Callas on 16th of September 1977 in Paris but then opts to reflect her life story through a narrative set during her last days. This period is in itself of limited interest because Callas had not performed on a stage for over four years, lived on her own with two faithful retainers, her butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and her maid, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), and was constantly taking drugs for medication in an obsessive manner. As for the once great voice, she was aware of its decline but, without necessarily believing that she could ever return to public performances, she was seeking to build it back as far as possible. She did this with the aid of the conductor Jeffrey Tate (Steven Ashfield) who was there acting as her piano accompanist.
The film having put itself in shackles by concentrating on this pathetic phase of her life then has to find a method to incorporate events from earlier days. This it does in two ways. First off it posits the idea that at this time Callas agreed to be interviewed by a filmmaker (Kodi Smit-McPhee) so that she can talk to him both answering his questions and expressing her thoughts about her past and present self. Secondly, because Callas is haunted by her glory days and by memories of her love for the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) – he who betrayed her by marrying Jackie Kennedy – the film freely incorporates shots of earlier times that she is impliedly remembering.
This cumbersome approach may provide a surface impression of her history but it hardly yields enough to bring the Callas story to dramatic life and it is made the more tiresome by the way in which it is presented. The fact that Callas was taking drugs and was seemingly dreaming each night that the now dead Onassis was back leads on to the idea that even in the daytime she may well have been hallucinating. This possibility is underlined by giving the unlikely invented figure of the interviewer the name of Mandrax which was also the name of the main drug that she was taking. As a figure in the tale, he comes and goes with no sense of logic adding to the sense that he may be imaginary.
Once hallucinations are likely involved there are no longer any limitations so a Paris exterior can look like an opera house stage with a chorus of singers and an image of the Eiffel Tower as a backcloth. Similarly, a street scene in the rain can show Maria herself singing along while behind her a performance of ‘The Humming Chorus’ from Madam Butterfly is taking place. Furthermore, late on when we get what seems to be a wholly naturalistic scene involving Maria and her sister Yakinthi (Valeria Galino), Maria is heard to say that she is not sure if her sister's presence is real or imagined. But even the flashbacks involving Onassis who was such a key figure in her life leave a superficial impression and the frequent use of orchestral music involving operatic themes hardly manages to bring much life into the proceedings. Nevertheless, rather bizarrely the fact that Onassis chose to marry Jackie Kennedy is used as an excuse to re-create the famous moment in which Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to her first husband.
Although it has been suggested that some of the singing here is done by Angelina Jolie herself, much of the music we hear does indeed feature authentic opera recordings by Callas as befits the many scenes representing her stage triumphs. But, although the film features a fair number of operatic arias, most of these either involve intercutting between 1977 and her heyday to contrast how she once performed and how it sounds now or are shown against a mixture of past images so edited that these varied visuals detract from the pleasure of simply taking in the music. Furthermore, some sequences that represent memories are shot in black-and-white but at other times they are seen in full colour without any clear explanation for the choice.
The one aria that seems to follow through in a more consistent style is that which virtually closes the film. It is ‘Vissi d’Arte' from Tosca and is heard performed by Callas herself while on screen we see the 53-year-old appearing to sing on the day of her death. The setting, save for an additional exterior shot, is the Parisian home of Callas but included are superimposed images of both the interviewer and of the late Aristotle Onassis although both fade out before the aria ends and Callas falls to the floor thus leading us back to the film’s opening scene with her dead body. This climactic sequence is offered under the title "An Ending: Ascent" but to what point? Since the singer's voice did not recover, Maria by this time seems to have turned into all-out fantasy. Despite helpful contributions from Favino, Rohrwacher, Bilinger and others, the film is far from being a worthwhile portrait of one of the major artists of the 20th century. It turns out instead to be a work which can only be described as empty.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Stephen Ashfield, Valeria Golino, Vincent Macaigne, Caspar Phillipson, Lydia Koniordou, Suzie Kennedy.
Dir Pablo Larraín, Pro Juan De Dios Larraín, Jonas Dornbach, Lorenzo Mieli, Pablo Larraín, Janine Jackowski, Maren Ade and Simone Gattoni, Screenplay Steven Knight, Ph Ed Lachman, Pro Des Guy Hendrix Dyas, Ed Sofia Subercaseaux, Costumes Massimo Cantini Parrini.
The Apartment/Komplizen Film/Fabula/FilmNation Entertainment-StudioCanal UK.
124 mins. Italy/Germany/Chile/Hungary/Greece/UK/USA. 2024. US Rel: 27 November 2024. UK Rel: 7 February 2025. Cert. 12A.
