'Maria' needed some operatic heft

 

  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.

    

A mobster turns agains the mob

Director Marco Bellocchio tells a detailed story about one of Italy’s great mafia trials.

We haven't exactly been suffering from a shortage of mafia movies but director Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a Cosa Nostra movie with a difference. Bellocchio centers his story on a real-life figure -- Tommaso Buscetta, the Sicilian gangster who in the 1980s made history when he testified against his former brothers in crime.

Not surprisingly, Buscetta’s foes thought he was a rat. But Buscetta, played with commanding power by Pierfrancesco Favino, maintained that he had remained loyal to the governing ethos of Cosa Nostra. He believed that the mob's entry into the heroin trade had helped plunge it into levels of brutality that went beyond anything that might be justified by loyalty or business.

When the movie begins, two rival Sicilian families meet in Palermo to forge a truce. Buscetta’s group reaches an accord with the Corleone mob, a group named for the Sicilian town where its operation has its headquarters. After the truce, which no one seems to take seriously, Buscetta heads to Brazil, where he also conducts business. He hopes to escape whatever bloodbath will follow.

The "peace" negotiations involved Buscetta's family. One of Buscetta's sons from a previous marriage had become addicted to heroin. The addicted son and his brother weren't supposed to be harmed after Buscetta left the country. Fat chance.

Buscetta eventually was arrested in Rio. The police dangled his third wife (Christina Fernanda Candido) from a helicopter while he was made to watch from another chopper. The presumably cornered, Buscetta had a change of heart. He was extradited to Italy, where he decided to testify against the mafia.

As the story unfolds, Buscetta develops a respectful relationship with the prosecutor who was trying to bring down the mob. The prosecutorial team was led by Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), an attorney who later lost his life in a mob-engineered explosion.

After his initial testimony, Buscetta and his wife (safe after her helicopter torment) were sent to the US and placed in the witness protection program. But Buscetta's grudging respect for Falcone led to his return to Italy to help nail Salvatore Riina (Nicola Cali), the head of the Corleone faction.

Rina prides himself on propriety and family values but turns out to be one of the more vicious members of Cosa Nostra. Buscetta hates what he sees as Riina’s s hypocrisy.

But make no mistake. Buscetta is no angel. He's less interested in doing the right thing than in finding a path on which he can take vengeance against former cohorts and save his own skin. He's never less than unremittingly tough.

Bellocchio tells the story with flashbacks and courtroom scenes. In the courtroom, the mobsters who were about to be convicted based on Buscetta’s testimony were held in cells at the back of the room. They had no interest in decorum and frequently shouted profanities at their accuser.

Bellocchio isn’t interested in following a mob-movie blueprint. He’s telling a real story, which may have more meaning to Italian audiences than to the American art-house crowd. He covers a long period. Italy’s famed mafia trails lasted six years - from 1986 to 1992. That makes The Traitor a kind of procedural epic.

It may take a few scenes for audiences to settle into the movie, but Bellocchio has taken an unblinkered look at a man who helped make the mob and ultimately decided to bring it down.