Maria (2024) Review: Angelina Jolie Soars in Pablo Larrain’s Hollow Biopic of Maria Callas
It’s been a long while since Angelina Jolie delivered a performance that is deemed Oscar-worthy and her latest starring vehicle Maria, which marks her return to acting since 2021’s Those Who Wish Me Dead and Eternals, looks like she will secure a nomination. Since the movie made its Venice debut to an eight-minute standing ovation, Jolie’s portrayal of the late renowned opera singer Maria Callas has been positioned as an Oscar frontrunner in the next year’s Best Actress category. Those who have seen Maria were mostly praised for her performance above all else, making me curious if she’s actually lived up to the hype.
Upon finally streaming the movie after landing on Netflix, I admire Jolie’s dedication to the craft. She reportedly spent nearly seven months undergoing vocal training to play an opera singer, a feat that she does reasonably well as the movie mixes her own singing voice with Callas’ recordings. She also deserves praise for embodying Callas’ diva-like appearance and personality with enough grace and poise. She may not match Callas’ thick accent after I watched some of her old interviews on YouTube but still does a good job speaking in an Old Hollywood tone, reminding me of the Mid-Atlantic accent prominently spoken during the black-and-white movie era.
But Jolie’s committed performance alone isn’t enough to overcome Pablo Larrain’s strangely muted direction in depicting such a legendary opera singer, who was highly regarded as one of the best sopranos ever lived in the 20th century. Maria is his third and final film in the trilogy exploring iconic women of the 20th century that began with Natalie Portman’s Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016) and Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana in Spencer (2021).
Working from Spencer’s Steven Knight’s screenplay, the story focuses primarily on Callas’ final days of her life in Paris as she is no longer in the spotlight like she used to be. Before her unfortunate death from a heart attack at the age of 53 on September 16, 1977, we learn that Callas is already in her frail state as she looks noticeably thin and even loses her voice. But she is still determined to sing and would spend time rehearsing while relying heavily on medication, specifically a sedative called Mandrax to get by. The drugs cause her to hallucinate, leading to occasional moments between the real and the imagined. One of which revolves around the interview with her phantom television journalist ironically named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as Larrain uses different visual techniques to portray Maria’s increasingly fuzzy mental state.
The story jumps back and forth between the past and the present with the use of monochrome and colour aesthetics representing parts of Maria’s memories. Credits also go to Ed Lachman’s beautifully textured cinematography employing different film formats from the classic 8mm to 35mm. He even does a good job capturing the soft-hued, gorgeous look of 1970s Paris. Other technical credits are equally worth mentioning here including Massimo Cantini Parrini’s and Guy Hendrix Dyas’ respectively lush costume and production design of the particular era.
While Jolie steals the show in Maria, the movie also features two solid supporting turns from Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher as Maria’s faithful butler and housekeeper, Ferruccio and Bruna. Too bad Maria remains a missed opportunity with the movie somehow lacking the much-needed strong emotional weight, making everything feel hollow. There’s a distinct coldness in Larrain’s direction, despite the way he tries to mix and match different filming techniques. A biopic like Maria Callas certainly deserves a better screen treatment and it’s a pity that Angelina Jolie’s otherwise award-worthy lead performance is mostly hampered by less-than-stellar writing and direction.
Maria is currently streaming on Netflix.
