MARIA Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Pablo Larrain
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Pierfranco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilinger, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Aggelina Papadopoulou, Valeria Golino, Stephen Ashfield, Vincent Macaigne.

Maria Callas, who died at the age of 53 in 1977, is regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time. But her life, luminous career and her later health struggles deserve better than this mediocre biopic.
Maria is the third film in Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s intimate trilogy depicting three powerful and famous but emotionally fragile women in the final days of their life. First up was Jackie, his 2016 biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with Natalie Portman in the title role, which was followed in 2021 by Spencer, his treatment of the tragic life of Princess Diana, with Kristen Stewart as the doomed royal.
Larrain has cast Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in this biopic that is set during her final week of life when she is consumed by regrets, misery and confusion, and she also reflects on her career and her triumphs and failures. She has retreated from public life and is living in Paris, although she still craves adoration from the public. But she has lost her famous singing voice and is addicted to pills. She is being prevailed upon to make one last effort to sing on the stage, and she attends private sessions with a conductor (Stephen Ashfield). But all of this is taking a toll on her failing health.
Maria has been written by Steven Knight, who also penned Spencer for Larrain, and it gives us the bullet points of her life and career. Knight and Larrain tend to focus on her darker moments, which gives the material a rather bleak outlook. We see her tempestuous relationship with billionaire Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (played here by Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer, from Winter Sleep, etc) who was the great love of her life even though he forbids her to sing while they were together. Maria is cared for by her two faithful house servants Ferrucio (Pierfrancesco Favino, from the police thriller Last Night OF Amore, etc) and Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher, from La Chimera, etc) who witness her physical and mental decline.
And she is holding conversation with a journalist (played by Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is making a documentary about her life and career. However, there is a suggestion that his character is just a figment of her troubled mind as he is named Mandrax, which was the name of one of the drugs she is taking. This fictional device doesn’t work and is one of the film’s weak points.
Maria follows a nonlinear narrative structure, and as with his previous films Larrain employs an impressionistic approach to his subject. His approach to the material seems cold and detached. Larrain uses a mix of film stock and visual mediums to present his take on Callas. He moves between black and white and colour; he also incorporates archival footage of Callas on stage performing some of her most famous roles at venues including La Scala, Covent Garden and New York’s The Met; and newsreel footage is juxtaposed against Jolie’s performance. There is little sense of what period we are in at times which leads to some confusion from the audience. And during the final credits we get to see some archival footage of the real Callas in a more relaxed and happy mood, which offers a contrast to the gloomy tone of the material.
Jolie delivers a fine performance in the title role, though. She is haughty and imperious and brings an aloof quality to her performance. And even though she doesn’t resemble Callas too closely she does capture the essence of the diva. She finds a vulnerability and wounded quality in the iconic character. Jolie apparently spent seven months training for the role, but Larrain uses Callas’ own vocals for the majority of the musical sequences, and Jolie’s lip synching is a little obvious. (This is a bit disappointing when you consider that the actors in the superior Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown performed all of their own vocals.) Caspar Phillipson, who played John F Kennedy in Larrain’s Jackie, briefly reprises his role here.
Maria is certainly a handsomely mounted production. The production design from Guy Hendrix Dyas (who also collaborated on Spencer) is superb, and Massimo Cantini Parrini’s costumes enrich the film. Ed Lachman’s cinematography is rich and textured.
Ultimately though, this is a flawed biopic, and I felt that I didn’t learn anything more about Maria Callas than I knew before I entered the cinema. This is a disappointment. There was an excellent documentary in 2017 called Maria By Callas, which provided an intimate look at the diva’s life using her own words. Those wanting to find out more about this tragic figure would do well to check it out instead.
★★