Angelina Jolie is magnificent as the late, great grand dame of opera in her faltering later years
Maria
Starring Angelina Jolie
Directed by Pablo LarraÍn
Rated PG-13
In theaters Wednesday, Nov. 27 (and on Netflix Dec. 8)
Angelina Jolie gives a committed, center-stage, Oscar-bait performance as temperamental diva Maria Callas, a 20th century singing superstar who thrilled audiences all over the world. But by the 1970s, Callas’ voice and body were fading and faltering, and the distant applause of the opera houses—and the adulation in which she once basked—were becoming lost in a swirl of hallucinatory memories.
Jolie, whose multi-faceted career includes playing a rock-em, sock-em spy (Salt), a slam-bang videogame heroine (Lara Croft) and a regal Disney villainess (Maleficent), adds another bright plume to her cap as the once-heralded soprano, basking in glorious fantasy in the final weeks of her life in the 1970s. In the kind of sympathetic, deep-dish performance that tends to get awards attention, Jolie—as gorgeous as ever—reportedly prepared for the role for more than six months, learning the physicality and bold body mechanics of singing opera to realistically lip-sync to Callas’ actual vocals throughout the film. She gets a big bravo from me.
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog, Let Me In) has a recurring role as a filmmaker—a figment of her imagination—interviewing Callas for a documentary about her. (Tellingly, the filmmaker’s name, Mandrax, comes from the sedative Callas has squirrelled away through her ornate Paris apartment.) The dreamscape documentary becomes central to the film, as it allows for numerous flashbacks illuminating Callas’ tumultuous life, including the traumas of her childhood (her mom, who told her she was “fat and unlovable,” and pimped her and her sister out to Nazis), her highly publicized affair with gazillionaire Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer), and her encounters in the 1960s with a handsome young JFK (Caspar Phillipson). And how Callas found herself in the middle of a scandal when Onassis began having extramarital affairs with both Callas and JFK’s wife, Jackie; yes, he was a lecherous filthy-rich asshole who loved ancient art, his luxury yacht and leggy brunettes.
Callas’ housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) and manservant (Pierfrancesco Favino) are big parts of the story, trying to keep their boss grounded, anchored and safe as she drifts off, in more ways than one. “What’s real and unreal,” Callas says at one point, “is my business.”
Director Pablo LarraÍn utilizes a variety of techniques—mimicking cinéma verité, old newsreels and flights of sprawling psychological fantasy—to bring the story to immersive, vibrant life. Maria nowcompletes the Chilean director’s masterful trilogy of biopics about famous females, including Jackie (with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy) and Spencer (Kristin Stewart played Princess Diana).
It’s all a mad, magnificent swirl, with Jolie in the middle as the tragic diva whose escape—from harsh reality and the woes of her world—was her voice, her music…and then, her inner space. In a subtle grace-note touch, the film depicts Callas’ expired body, on the floor of her apartment filled with sculpted relics and fine art…where the whelps, whimpering and howls of her two little poodles become a sort of eulogy for the sublime high notes of her now-silent voice.
Fitting, that even dogs would want to continue her song, for a woman who once filled the cavernous spaces of the world with music. And Maria picks up her songful story again, hopefully for a new generation to discover one of the greatest, most acclaimed and sublimely troubled vocalists to ever grace an opera stage.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 