MARIA - Mark Reviews Movies

Maria, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 10, 2024

Director Pablo Larraín is clearly enamored with history and historical figures, and Maria, the director's latest of several biographical dramas, revolves around the final days of internationally famous opera singer Maria Callas. At the height of her career, Callas was known around the world for her lofty soprano voice and her tendency to cancel performances due to health issues. One man from New York City visiting Paris during these last days spots Maria at a café and announces that the singer broke his heart. It wasn't because of her singing but because he had tickets for one of the nights when she decided not to appear on stage at the last minute.

The Maria of Larraín's movie, played by Angelina Jolie, is such a mercurial spirit, even in the looming shadow of death. She doesn't know she's going to die, although we do from the very start—with her body lying on the floor of her luxurious apartment, as various people go about the business of what needs to be done in such a situation. Before that, the singer spends her final days in a state of denial, prompted by her flailing voice and her desire to finally sing for herself alone, and hallucination, brought about by the numerous prescription drugs she takes to keep her failing body in some kind of order.

The only sense of Maira or, as she sometimes prefers to be called, "la Callas" outside of this haze of despair, anger, and visions comes from assorted flashbacks in Steven Knight's screenplay. We mainly observe her affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), the Greek mogul who seems set on collecting famous women in the same way he hoards ancient artifacts from his homeland, and receive brief flashes of the singer's difficult relationship with her mother (played by Lydia Koniordou).

The main thesis of putting these two relationships at the core of Maria's memories is blatantly said a few times: Aristotle didn't want her to sing, and the mother forced her to do so. Maria hated and resents both conditions, and now that she actually does want to sing on her terms, her body is denying her of that as a legitimate possibility. The tragedy, then, isn't that Maria eventually dies but that she was never able to live her life the way she wanted to.

It certainly feels as if not much of a life is presented in Larraín's movie, which expands its narrative through time, via those flashbacks, and space, by way of her lengthy walks throughout Paris and the change of settings in those memories. However, the whole affair feels claustrophobic and limited. We understand the first, because Maria is trapped in this state of falling back into the past with her present being so dictated by her physical and self-imposed restrictions. The second part, though, is simply unfortunate, because we come away from this movie with little knowledge or understanding of this character.

She lived at one point—with all the fame and adoration that someone in her position could receive—but was miserable, regardless. Now that she's dying and isn't aware of it, she's even more miserable, because the fame has dwindled (She can walk down the streets without anyone noticing her), the love affair has ended, her only company amounts to two loyal employees and a pair of dogs, and, worst of all, her voice isn't what it used to be when she needs it to be so.

The Maria of the movie, certainly played by Jolie with passion, is defined by misery and her hallucinatory state. When she's not in the apartment singing for her maid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) or privately practicing with a vocal coach (played by Stephen Ashfield), Maria imagines herself being interviewed for a documentary. The filmmaker, whom we realize isn't real pretty quickly after his introduction, is a young man named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who wants to get to the core of the singer's history and psychology.

She's hesitant at first. Since she also wants to write her autobiography at some point soon, she does offer some details, including her mother selling her two daughters' company to SS officers in Nazi-occupied Athens, Aristotle's possessive jealousy, and her insistence that all of those canceled performances were due to legitimate illness. There's some irony, perhaps, in the fact that everyone except her can see and accept the severity of her current health issues, but without a self-destructive drive to reclaim her former glory, what is there, really, to the character here?

Larraín's technique is, at least, precise and effective in creating this constant feeling of uncertainty, in generating this momentum toward destruction, and the use of juxtaposition in clever ways. How, for example, do we know Maria's voice is failing her? The filmmaker intercuts scenes of Maria in her prime, using recordings of the real Callas on the soundtrack (as Jolie lip-syncs to them with inconsistent believability), with those scenes of the present-tense Maria with the vocal coach, in which Jolie herself sings—quite well, actually, but nowhere near Callas, of course.

In general, Jolie's performance is quite good, in fact, although the limiting nature of the narrative carries through to the character. As much as the movie may tell us about broad outline of Callas' life, her depiction in Maria becomes a repetitive and somewhat monotonous course toward tragedy.

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