Biopics are so rarely this beautiful and fascinating. Think of the onslaught of them that barely scratch the surface of their subjects; especially heinous in this vein are those about musicians, relying heavily on recreations (or lip-syncs) of famous performances to fill a runtime that hurries from iconic look to overly dramatized scenes of troubled personal lives. And each time, audiences decry what amount to jukebox montages, seeking artistic integrity and braver swings when it comes to depicting complex inner lives of our celebrities. Pablo Larrain does that, and I don't know why more people aren't talking about his trilogy of troubled wealthy white Western goddesses, which started with the amazing Jackie (2016) and transcendent Spencer (2021).
Maria takes as its subject the renowned and influential American-Greek soprano Maria Callas, "the Divine One," in the final week of her life in 1977, in relative isolation in her Paris apartment. Due to her declining health, she has stopped singing for some years and hidden from the public, relying heavily on substances to cope with her failing body and mind while slowly poisoning herself in what is implied to be a semi-intentional self-sabotage. Yet the film suggests that she wants to sing again, so she paces the cavernous halls of her abode like a Victorian ghost, occasionally singing for her maid or butler, or for herself, as Hamlet's mother might say, holding discourse with the incorporal air. She even becomes sure enough of herself that she commissions a final recording to be made, though it does not seem that she is up to the task when the time comes.
Larrain is notably a fan of opera, so it makes some sense that this final entry in his trilogy is more sentimental and gentle than the previous two. Steven Knight's screenplay allows for lots of thickly theatrical dialogue that may strike some as unrealistic but struck my ears as exactly the kind of abstract pretense often voiced by high art professionals, particularly after having experienced fame. Anyone who fears losing their body as a means of professional craft will appreciate this film, as the otherwise beautiful and elegant Callas privately wars with her own perfectionism and atrophying vocal muscles. In one memorable scene, she declares that she cannot listen to her own recordings because they are too perfect, and real music should never be technically perfect but rather interactive and reflective of the present audience and space. It's this kind of knowing writing that allows the character to reach out from her circumstances and touch contemporary audiences cerebrally.
And Angelina Jolie more than rises to the occasion, proving yet again that she is an exceptional actress of formidable skills. She often mutely expresses ineffable emotions, fighting like King Lear against the raging tempest of time, refusing to go gentle into that good night, even as she cannot quite resuscitate her dying voice. It's not unlike watching Julianne Moore losing her mind in Still Alice, though it's a much-heightened piece of aesthetic drama in Larrain's vision rather than a pure character-based psychological treatise. Jolie allows the pretentious dialogue to lilt off her lips while maintaining an icy poise, the kind of camp diva we all expect of a star of her caliber; I wondered, at first, if this would simply be an excuse for Jolie to exhibit her own comfort and cruelty as a bonafide star in her own right, but she puts in hard work here, carefully skewing just shy of the usual rudeness and entitlement we see in films of musical stars suddenly lording over their servants and fans. Too, I have to say, Jolie's lip-synching is so utterly convincing in this admittedly difficult role -- and through numerous close-up, long takes of just her face as Callas sings -- that I repeatedly forgot it wasn't a live musical number. One moment even reminded me of Cynthia Erivo's magnificent singing in Bad Times at the El Royale.
Curiously, several of Callas's scenes of singing are played up quite ambiguously. Though it's clear in moments that she's not the great soprano at the height of her career -- which is saying a lot, as she died so comparably young at the age of 53 -- it's never quite clear if she's actually any good. The film weaves in and out of her headspace so fluidly that it's possible she's legitimately lost her voice (a few telling closeups of the maid in particular are almost embarrassing by proxy) or if she's still pretty damn great and simply not living up to her own personal standards. I love that choice, because, much as we saw so well in Birdman, the art is so rarely an objective thing that it has to be mediated by other ears and eyes. Not a far cry, that, from the death of the artist argument, of course, but it bears some consideration here.
And there are some moments, reportedly, in which Jolie herself does sing and we hear it, though I defy anyone to try and identify those moments, because the sound design is really phenomenal and Jolie is firing everything she's got at the role. And it feels oddly personal to her, which is also intriguing; much as her foray into melodrama in the possibly pseudo-autobiographical By the Sea, this smacks of personal investment for her, and it's hard to ignore someone who's been such a global star for as long as her ilk fretting and puttering around as they contemplate their own imminent demise and possibly incomplete legacy. All this, too, is to have said nothing of the miraculous realism and photo-accurate recreations of sets and costumes and hairstyles throughout the film, which seamlessly craft a memorable atmosphere for the drama and will surely excite fans of Callas herself. Anyone interested in the sordid details of her private life will be left wanting -- her relationship with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) is present and effective but sparse on specifics or on her feelings about it -- and the personification of Mandrax, her primary drug of choice amidst an ongoing medication cocktail, in an interviewing Kodi Smit-McPhee is both obnoxious and sometimes affecting. But as a slice of imaginative speculation into the life of one of opera's brightest stars, the film has so much to say about the cost and pursuit of art and what is left in its glorious wake.
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