The Reel Review
A creative reimagining of the final week in the life of larger-than-life Greek-American diva Maria Callas, one of the most influential opera singers in the modern era, is chronicled in director Pablo Larrain’s Netflix biopic starring Angelina Jolie.
Maria is Larrain’s third profile of a significant woman in the 20th century facing a crisis, after 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer. Like those other films, it is another visually lavish spectacle. And also like the other two films, it is depressing and a bit dry. The story starts with the September 1977 day that a now-reclusive Callas dies from a heart attack, then going back to the week before, peppered with flashbacks of key milestones in her life. At this point, Callas hasn’t performed in public in many years, her declining voice leaving her a devastated recluse, living with her maid Bruna and butler Ferruccio (played beautifully by Alba Rohrwacher and Pierfrancesco Favino) in her sumptuous Paris apartment, her painkillers causing hallucinations that she is being interviewed by a young filmmaker, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog). Haluk Bilginer plays her love interest, Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Despite the dry, joyless story, the screenplay from Stephen Knight (Spencer, Peaky Blinders) is still stronger than Larrain’s prior two films, thanks largely to Jolie’s captivating, tour de force performance. She channels the diva in such a way to make Callas both imperious and mesmerizing. It’s just a shame she wasn’t given a stronger, more revealing story in which to really shine.
REEL FACTS
• Angelina Jolie trained for seven months learning to sing opera and does sing in Maria, her vocals blended with Callas’ in post-production.
• A 2010 study revealed that Maria Callas had suffered from dermatomyositis, a rare disease of the body’s connective tissue (which includes the larynx), explaining her rapid vocal decline in the 1960s. Above is Callas’ 1958 debut at the Paris Opera.
• Caspar Phillipson, who played President John F. Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie, reprises that same role in Maria.
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