Pablo Larraín can now call himself a director of a trilogy—but it isn’t one he intended to make. His trilogy of iconic 20th-century women follows Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie), Princess Diana (Spencer), and now, Maria Callas (Maria), during a specific time in their lives. Each film deals with some kind of loss. In Jackie, it’s the loss of a husband. In Spencer, it’s a loss of freedom. In Maria, it’s the loss of a voice. One of the most renowned and influential opera singers of all time, Callas’s final days are examined in Larraín’s latest film. Written by Steven Knight, the film begins and ends on the day of her death. In between, the legendary diva (played by Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie) reflects on her past and tries to find her voice again before it’s too late. The American-born Greek soprano’s life in this final week becomes akin to the Greek tragedies that she played on stage. In that regard, her third act should be one of celebration, but Maria ends up being drowned in sorrow and feels as though it loses its grasp on its titular character in the process.
The moments after Maria Callas’s death, captured by Larraín in Maria’s opening scene, are silent, as though the death of a great voice took all sound with it. Then, the score trickles in softly, followed by her voice as it once was. Various scenes from the past at the height of Callas’s fame begin to appear in black and white, always returning to a close-up of Jolie in the role, mouthing the words to “Ave Maria” from Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. While Jolie doesn’t sing herself in the film, seven months of training were needed for her to learn how to fake-sing opera. That training paid off, as every word sung is felt with force and every emotion is conveyed with an almost tangible earnestness.
What’s most notable about the film from the start, aside from the powerhouse performance we’re about to experience, is Ed Lachman’s cinematography. Shooting Jolie in a way that frames “La Divina” in a golden glow, the warmth of her world is unexpected, considering how much sadness she carries. Even when scenes are darker or cooler, they don’t stay that way for long. Visually, the color contrasts represent the world she has built and the one that is real. The interior of her apartment and the exterior on the streets of Paris are shot very differently. However, when life gets too real in the outside world, a warmth quickly presents itself, like when she imagines an orchestra playing around her on a ground covered in fallen leaves.
The reality of her life—the reality of no longer having the voice she once had—is something she tries to ignore with the help of quaaludes. Every scene in Maria feels like one that the singer herself has created; we aren’t privy to the truth until she decides. While she is performing a scene from Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma for her housekeeper, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), we hear a voice of memory. We don’t hear the reality of how poorly she sings. Even so, Bruna tells Maria that she’s “magnificent.” That’s the only motivation Maria needs to try again—not necessarily to perform in front of people again, but to capture “La Callas” again.
“La Callas” is explained to be very different from the woman behind the voice. However, Maria doesn’t really establish a clear distinction between the two. Her voice takes more importance over the person. On one hand, this crafts an endearing, complex relationship between an artist and her art and how it can become indistinguishable from the very soul, but it becomes frustrating to watch a film about a character who feels hollow otherwise. Her sense of self may have truly been lost, and Larraín has proven to enjoy taking a deep dive into the psychology of a person, but including even the smallest pre-“La Callas” scenes makes the audience want more.
Scenes shot through an old video camera to create a home-movie intimacy provide a small glimpse at the woman off the stage. The love she shows for her housekeeper Bruna and her butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), her obsession over where to place a piano in her apartment, and her ability to speak her mind with a hint of humor provide us with a rare glimpse of the person under the cloud of a woman often hallucinating. Massimo Cantini Parrini’s costume design does wonders for this as well. She wears huge glasses that feel like a shield and long shawls and coats like armor, as though she’s protecting herself from a heartbreaking reality. Eventually, she lets all that go, and you see her dressed in black, capturing her truthfully in her frailty and ill health. Not singing has wounded her, but singing could kill her.
The drugs she takes make the audience question what is real and what isn’t, particularly concerning a TV crew that’s come to interview her. The truth becomes clear as the film goes on, but perhaps speaking or pretending to speak about her story is easier when another is asking the questions. She does open up about her past, but it’s often contradictory. She’ll say she hasn’t performed in four and a half years when history says it’s really 12 years. She’ll say she couldn’t be controlled—that’s why the love of her life, Aristotle Onassis, didn’t want to marry her—but then she’ll say he forbade her to sing. It feels as though Larraín and Knight are really trying to work this kind of celebratory arc, but the reflection we are given of Maria feels both impenetrable and convoluted at the same time. It’s a line that is difficult to fully grasp, but perhaps it was one that was hard for the singer to grasp herself.
Of the 17 pieces that are sung in the film, one captures Maria Callas most accurately at this stage in her life. In Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, there’s an aria in the third act that is a reflection of life and acts as a prayer to understand why life has become one of anguish. Jolie’s Maria is tired; her soul was sucked out of her and left on an opera house stage. She holds on for as long as she can by creating a stage in her mind, a symphony everywhere she goes, which, through costume and production design, gives the audience a glimpse of Callas doing what she once did best. “What do I do now?” A question of lamentation is posed when she knows the perfection of “La Callas” is long gone. As Jolie performs like Callas’s own voice is projecting through her, every intake of breath the star takes is one of desperate reclamation of control she no longer has.
Before the scene fades to black, we are hit with the image of a woman desperate to die with every part of her intact. Whether in mind or body, we can all hope for the same. This depiction of Maria, which heavily relies on her dream-like state, creates a disconnect that’s often hard to shake. It’s a challenging examination, but one Jolie takes on in a once-in-a-lifetime performance. It’s quite a solemn depiction of someone’s last days that plays out like a Greek tragedy, but there’s a profound truth in the tragedy of the human experience. And it’s one that left Maria’s life under a bright spotlight with inspirational conviction.