“I’m in the mood for adulation.”
That exasperated line by Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas was destined to be a diva camp classic, a rhetorical monument to grand dames (and grand dame wannabes) who want to convey dismissive indifference and spellbinding elegance.
But what if it’s more? What if Callas’s mood was a prison in which she had no hope of escaping?
That prevailing question shapes Maria, the final entry in Pablo Larraín’s trilogy on 20th-century female cultural icons. (2016’s Jackie centered on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, while 2019’s Spencer followed Princess Diana.) Maria follows the final week of opera legend Maria Callas’s (Jolie) life. Maria’s health – physical and mental – is failing. Despite the protestations of her butler, Ferrucio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and housemaid, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), she insists on handling it on her terms. Maria chooses to reckon with her imminent end by participating in an imaginary documentary about her life with the physical manifestation of her medication, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and rehearsing for her heralded comeback to the opera stage. Maria’s small steps out of reclusion allow her to take stock of key parts of her storied life, including the lingering role of her former lover, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer).
Like Jackie and Spencer, Maria lasers in on a particularly volatile period of its subject’s life, intending to extrapolate a salient point about the totality of their existence. Selecting the tail-end of Maria Callas’s life risked limiting the singer to the tragedies that similarly weighed down Spencer. The film’s use of the documentary and the rehearsals as a combined framing device evades that issue, allowing Maria and the audience to examine her unique challenges as a public figure. It allows the diva to retain her public persona’s glib elegance and still be candid and vulnerable about her personal and professional struggles and the pain they still cause her.
Maria’s inability to reclaim her extraordinary voice is the most powerful of those struggles. Maria insists to Mandrax that she has no intention of singing again, explaining that “the audience expects miracles. I can no longer perform miracles.” And yet, she returns several times to the empty theater with her accompanist, resisting and ultimately acquiescing to his challenges of her performance. Larraín juxtaposes Maria’s rehearsals with her past performances at the height of her powers, gorgeously visualized by cinematographer Edward Lachman. To the untrained ear, Maria’s present voice sounds near-perfect, and the responses of Bruna in the kitchen and a technician holding her spotlight convey its deeply affecting emotionality. However, Larraín’s fluid cuts and Jolie’s anxious, devasted eyes emphasize Maria’s awful truth: her titanic voice is a shadow of its former self.
Later in the film, Maria objects to a bartender playing one of her records. She claims she never listens to her recordings because they are perfect, and performances shouldn’t be perfect; each one should stand on its own unique merits, flaws and all. Again, the contradiction is key, as Maria later listens to her old records on her bedroom floor. Maria mourns for her remarkable gift and the freedom it gave her to not worry about perfection. When she was “La Callas,” adulation was the standard, practically inuring Maria to it. Without it, fans and reporters tactlessly confront her with her failings, which guts her every single time. Maria still lives and breathes music despite her diminished capacity and the world’s provocations. She and the film lean on the past to fortify that connection as she prepares for an end she fears less than losing the music.
When Maria isn’t examining her connection to music, it explores her less compelling connection to Aristotle Onassis. Larraín spends significant time in flashbacks to Maria and Aristotle’s years-long affair, from their first meeting at a post-concert reception to her visiting him on his deathbed. The film notes that Onassis was behind her retreat from music, but it doesn’t fully dig into the conflict that might’ve brought to their relationship or how Maria managed to love him despite his attempts at control. While the relationship does add dimension to Maria, it feels more tangential than illuminating, especially when her life has more immediately relevant material to explore (like her strained relationships with her mother and sister).
Regardless of the material, Angelina Jolie delivers a fully realized and deeply felt performance she’s been building up to since 1998’s Gia. It’s striking how the two performances are in conversation with each other. Jolie’s interpretation of supermodel Gia Carangi was a ferocious hellcat who wore her toxic insecurities in her achingly honest eyes. As Maria, Jolie floats across the screen with a world-weary elegance and deliciously caustic wit. It’s those same eyes, however, that open up the audience to the fragility that Maria tries to mask with her withering retorts and laissez-faire attitude. When Maria sings, Jolie’s face carries all the aching strain and heartbreak of a monumental talent on her last legs, and you can’t help feeling the devastation she won’t grant herself on her behalf. Intentional or not, Maria is a brilliant compliment to her breakout role and houses arguably her best-ever performance.
Maria is the best of Larraín’s trilogy, mostly cracking the code on crafting an immersive, involving portrait of a spell-binding but inherently distant figure. While still informed by tragedy, the film doesn’t wallow in it, granting his grand dame a genuine, agency-filled voice, even though she effectively lost the one the world celebrated her for. Thanks to a career-best Angelina Jolie and sumptuous images and sound, Maria Callas’s mood for adulation should feel less like a prison and more like a launchpad to a new generation of admirers of her singular gifts.
Maria played as part of the Spotlight section at the 2024 New York Film Festival. The film will debut on December 11, 2024, courtesy of Netflix.
Director: Pablo Larraín
Writer: Steven Knight
Rated: R
Runtime: 122m
Maria is the best of Larraín’s trilogy, mostly cracking the code on crafting an immersive, involving portrait of a spell-binding but inherently distant figure.
-
GVN Rating
A late-stage millennial lover of most things related to pop culture. Becomes irrationally irritated by Oscar predictions that don’t come true.
