When Maria Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53, the New York Times obituary called her "the most exciting opera singer of her time."
Director Pablo Larrain's Maria presents Callas at her height only in flashbacks when the singer recalls previous triumphs. Known for Jackie and Spencer, the Chilean-born Larrain tends to focus his biographical efforts on well-known women at low points in their lives. In this case, Callas faces an artist's worst nightmare: diminishing powers.
Larrain's abbreviated biopic hits few high notes as it chronicles the final days of an artist who already has begun to fade; tormented by inexorable decline, both Callas and the movie lose spark.
In Maria, Angelina Jolie plays Callas, who's living in Paris, where she occasionally meets with a pianist in hopes of regaining her voice. The pianist (Stephen Ashfield) refuses to coddle her. He knows she's done. She knows she's done, but our emotions aren't summoned by the magnitude of Callas's loss.
By this time, Callas was popping pills and ignoring the physician who told her that if she kept pushing to regain her vocal prowess, she'd kill herself. She disregarded her doctor’s advice and suffered a fatal attack. Larrain opens his movie with Callas dead on the floor of her apartment, her body mostly hidden by a sofa.
There are two stars of Larrain's film: Jolie's Callas and Callas's lavish apartment, the Paris abode where she lives with her housemaid and cook (Alba Rohrwacher) and her loyal butler (Pierfranceso Favino). Favino's Ferruccio cares for Callas despite her sometimes excessive demands. He may evoke memories of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard.
Jolie brings regal aloofness to the role of a woman whose life began in poverty and ascended to the upper levels of celebrity, wealth, and artistic recognition. She was known for being “temperamental,” but some of the more publicized turmoil in her life (getting fired from the Met, for example) are omitted in this telling.
Several of Larrain's flashbacks depict Callas's relationship with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), the shipping magnate who eventually dumped Callas for Jaqueline Kennedy.
We see scenes of Callas's difficult girlhood. The mother she grew to hate made Callas and her sister (briefly played as an adult by Valeria Golina) provide diversion for German invaders during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Thankfully, the movie refrains from showing us how carnal these diversions may have gotten.
Larrain makes structural mistakes, the worst of which involves having Callas interviewed by a TV journalist (Kodi Smith-McPhee) who's making a film about the great singer. Really? Haven't we seen enough of this worn out conceit?
I’m not saying Maria isn’t watchable. Mixing black-and-white and color footage, cinematographer Ed Lachman creates a somber beauty of a movie, and the musical selections, some of which reportedly blend Jolie's voice with Callas's, create moments of majesty.
Clips of Callas singing on YouTube make it clear that she performed with a heightened level of passion few could match. Larrain's film could have used some of the singer’s operatic sweep, a sense that it’s riding a tragic wave as it hurtles toward its inevitable crash.
And one more thing: Given its subject, the movie might better have been titled Callas. There are many Marias, but there was only one Callas. No offense to anyone who goes through life with that same surname.
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