Angelina Jolie embodies the glamour and tragedy of Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s haunting biopic.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
In “Maria,” a fictionalized biography of the last days of Maria Callas, arguably the greatest diva of the 20th century, Angelina Jolie is haughty, sexy, angry, vulnerable, beautifully coiffed, and clothed, hooked on prescription drugs, and in a deep, dense fog. Callas lives in Paris on Avenue Georges Mandel in regal splendor, where she is tended by faithful major-domo Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and cook and maid Bruna (a scene-stealing Alba Rohrwacher). “Maria” is perhaps most of all a personal expression from Jolie, 49, who was a screen diva for decades and has experienced a recent, messy divorce.
Directed by Chilean Pablo Larrain, who has now completed a trilogy of films featuring troubled, famous women—“Jackie,” “Spencer,” and now “Maria” (Jackie Kennedy even makes a ghostly cameo in “Maria,” bringing things full circle). Written by Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) and set in 1977, the year of Callas’ premature death, the film begins with Maria dead on the floor on September 16 and then backtracks seven days. Maria opens and closes her eyes in her lavish, gold and ivory-colored, chandelier-decorated, high-ceiling flat and takes her drugs secretly (she thinks). She asks Ferruccio, who has a bad back, to push her grand piano from one window to another while Bruna cooks meals that she and Ferruccio end up eating. Maria feeds her two pampered poodles prosciutto and is herself hooked on Mandrax, aka Quaalude. During the day, she meets with a documentary filmmaker and superfan also named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McFee, “The Power of the Dog”). Maria has additional meetings around Salle Richelieu with a pianist-director type (Stephen Ashfield), who is helping her assess if her voice is strong enough for a comeback attempt. Paging Norma Desmond.
Of course, in Maria’s drug-crazed world, all of these things could be hallucinations. I mean, the guy’s name is also Mandrax? There’s something about Maria, alright, and it’s a boy named Mandrax.
In between Jolie lip-syncing (famous lips quivering) along with recordings of Callas’ most famous arias from such works as “I, Puritani,” “Norma,” “Carmen,” “La Wally” and “Tosca,” Callas reminds us of her triumphs at La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the Met at Lincoln Center and more. The life of Callas is in the flashbacks and piles of recordings (which still sell well).
In the film’s present time, La Diva exists in a haunted, drugged-out netherworld. She has not forgotten the past. She lives in it. We cut from a shaky Callas singing while her dogs watch and listen to a younger Callas casting her spell and then back again to Callas and the dogs. The film plays out in three acts, just like an opera, beginning with “Act One: La Diva.” On a rock star trajectory from fame and fortune to drug addiction and early death, Callas knows that she may never perform again, never experience the “exaltation and intoxication.” She hides behind big sunglasses, long, curly locks tumbling down her back, and has very thin arms. Her rooms are full of busts: a frozen audience.
As girls in Athens, Maria and her sister (Valeria Golino as an adult) were forced to sing for Nazis. “Music,” Maria later pronounces, is “born of distress.” Jack Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson, who played JFK in Larrain’s “Jackie”) appears in time to accept an invitation to cruise on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht.
The film is an often riveting, constantly-shifting portrait of La Divina with her servants as chorus, ending, of course, with “Madama Butterfly” and “Un bel di, vedremo.” Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer is another asset as Onassis. Hair, make-up, and costume design are mostly superb. Production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas (“Spencer”) is also first-rate. But the secret ingredient in “Maria,” in addition to a career-high turn from La Jolie, is the lush, thrillingly protean work of cinematographer Ed Lachman, who, although he has been nominated for three Academy Awards, including one last year for Larrain’s “El Conde,” he has not won. Lachman even slips in a glimpse at Maxfield Parrish’s Old King Cole mural at the St. Regis Hotel bar, one of my favorite places. Give him the Oscar this time for turning a modestly conceived film into a visually spellbinding descent into celebrity madness.
‘Maria’
Rating: R for a sexual reference, some language
Cast: Angalina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Kodi Smit-McFee
Director: Pablo Larrain
Writer: Steven Knight
Running time: 122 minutes
Where to Watch: Coolidge Corner Movie Theater, Landmark Kendall Square
Grade: A-
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