movie review
MARIA
Running time: 123 minutes. Rated R (some language including a sexual reference). In some theaters.
Near the end of “Maria,” 53-year-old Maria Callas, the opera diva stunningly played by Angelina Jolie, attempts to make it through the challenging mad scene from “Anna Bolena” in an empty Paris theater.
Like poor Anne Boleyn, these are the final, messy days of her life. But the singer’s executioner is her frustrating inability to deliver.
“Audiences expect miracles,” Maria says. “I can no longer perform them.”
Callas, so adept at the physical and vocal rigors of operatic mad scenes she released an entire album of them, gets a cinematic one in the form of Pablo Larraín’s affecting psychological biopic — a requiem for arguably the greatest soprano of all time.
As Callas so devastatingly starts to lose it, “Maria” satisfyingly stirs our insides in the mysterious way an opera does.
The visually sumptuous film begins with Maria being found dead on the floor in 1977 France, where she spent her last years. Yet Larraín gives the narrative some hopeful drive as, in the seven days prior, she decides she wants to sing again — not as a comeback, but just to regain her lost voice. To once again become La Callas.
The soprano’s diminished instrument, still pretty to the untrained ear, has fallen from its stratospheric peak due to a mix of debated factors: 80-pound weight loss, a quaalude-like drug called Mandrax and a lack of confidence in middle age.
Maria’s lonely. She’s single following a relationship with the now-dead Aristotle Onassis, and keeps only the company of her butler (Pierfrancesco Favino), housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) and two poodles. “Ninety-nine percent of you wants food, and one percent is love,” she says to the dogs.
Without music, she has nothing.
Not eating as she pops pills like M&Ms, Maria’s addled mind hallucinates that an interviewer (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is speaking to her for a documentary. They stroll around the City of Light in autumn as she vulnerably exposes her past: singing for money in Greece, her stage triumphs, meeting Aristotle (Haluk Bilginer), her jealousy of Jackie O. It’s a traditional but effective set-up.
Jolie, whose combination of artistry and larger-than-life stardom makes her the only actress who could play this part right now, is luminous. Her eyelashes open like curtains to reveal those piercing Callas peepers — a trait they share.
And she’s softer than expected. Callas’ off-stage notoriety was a result of her volatility. While there are glimpses of harder edges, Jolie plays her as frail. Too tired and weak to explode anymore.
A quibble is that I never believed Callas’ recorded sound was coming out of Jolie’s mouth, even though the actress trained to appear to sing properly. There’s nothing to be done about that. The diva’s voice was so unique, so alien, that it could really only emanate from the genuine article.
Of course, nothing here is meant to be realistic. Many events depicted didn’t really happen, and details are highly exaggerated.
Similar to Larraín’s “Jackie,” the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis film starring Natalie Portman, and “Spencer,” the Princess Diana movie with Kristen Stewart, “Maria” is more emotional than literal.
But, as always, the unusual director affectingly drills down to the essence of a woman who’s falling apart in public view. And far from last year’s Marilyn Monroe travesty “Blonde” — not his — Larraín doesn’t use creative license to disgustingly exploit his subjects.
Audiences will, I suspect, embrace his latest effort more than than the previous two. “Maria” eschews the bizarre and ugly in favor of a more human story. Just as in a good Puccini, heart prevails over intellect.
A sound I heard for the first time at a Larraín movie: sniffles.
