Another day, another Pablo Larrain pretentio-biopic led by a mega-megawatt star. This time, it’s Angelina Jolie, playing mid-century opera phenom Maria Callas, following Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in 2021’s Spencer, and Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie. So it’s a third-time’s-a-trend formula now, where Larrain, possibly showing disdain for conventional biopics – a feeling we should undoubtedly sympathize with – overcorrects on the side of artsy-fartsiness. That can be good (hey, at least he’s ambitious!) or bad (get over yourself, man!), and Maria is absolutely illustrative of the director’s weird creative dichotomy. Will we take it or leave it this time? That’s not an easy question to answer.
The Gist: Sept. 16, 1977: An ornate, luxurious Paris apartment. The camera slowly pivots to a sad scene. Police and medics enter the frame. Is that a body behind a chair and beneath a sheet? Seems like it. Cut to: Jolie as Maria Callas, in black-and-white, in closeup, staring directly at us, singing (lip-syncing, if you may) to grandiose opera. The lyrics are in Italian, but I’m pretty sure it translates to give me an Oscar please. Next: A scene in color, as Maria tosses her fancy dresses atop a bonfire. Jump: ONE WEEK EARLIER. Maria finally drags herself out of bed mid-afternoon, walks past her devoted butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) as he pushes her piano through the room, and greets her devoted housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) as she fries an omelet. Maria’s two poodles scuttle hither and thither. She lets rip right there in the kitchen, singing her lungs out, and imagines-slash-hallucinates that she’s on stage, wowing another captivated audience.
Piece these sequences together, and add in the revelation that Maria is hitting the quaaludes pretty hard – specifically, Mandrax – and it’s clear that Maria is Going Through Something. Ferruccio and Bruna are concerned for her, being a complex melange of her friends, family and employees; Maria calls them things like “son” and “mother” and “father” and the like, making this point all too clear. Ferruccio tracks her considerable pill consumption and calls a doctor, and Bruna frets that Maria just doesn’t really eat much anymore. Maria flounces about the spacious apartment in a white robe and nightgown, emerging from bed with perfect hair, slipping into surely the most comfortable set of three-inch spike heels in her wardrobe. She reminds Ferruccio that a TV crew is stopping by to interview her, and he asks if it’s real. Seems to be, since the interviewer is played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, but then again maybe not, as his name is Mandrax and there’s something about his eyes that seem, well, off.
Via flashbacks and the interviews with Mandrax, we learn how Maria got to this point of surreal depression. I’ll be concise and linear where the movie utterly refuses to be: As a teenager in Greece, Maria’s mother sells her “services” to an SS officer who, it turns out, only wants to hear her sing. That voice put her on top of the world in the 1950s as thee premier opera soprano. She meets rich semi-codger Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), who soon takes precedence over her definite codger husband. They travel the world and have a love affair, which comes to an end when she has coffee with JFK (Casper Phillipson) himself, and Onassis goes on a boat ride with Jackie, who we all know will be, after horrific circumstances play out, Jackie O. Onassis forbade Maria from singing, because, well, we can’t be sure, except it’s fair to make the assumption that he’s a rich asshole who only desires power and control. And now, she hasn’t sung publicly in years, possibly due to the psychological damage she sustained, possibly because her weight loss affected her voice. She walks to a nearby empty theater, where she sings only for herself and an accompanist, and her voice is failing. She meets with Ferruccio’s doctor, who lays out a grim portrait of her health. It seems, if she tries to sing like she used to, it might just kill her.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Outside of Larrain’s Women of the 20th Century “trilogy,” Maria has a lot in common with Bradley Cooper’s similarly look-at-me-I’m-artsy Leonard Bernstein bio Maestro, and a little in common with Sofia Coppola’s more subdued Priscilla Presley portrait Priscilla.
Performance Worth Watching: No choice. Jolie is there the whole time, capital-A Acting her ass off. This isn’t a bad thing at all, the actor delivering a gently self-aware performance that characterizes Maria as such a hopeless and unapologetic diva, she makes the likes of Mariah Carey, Aretha Franklin and Celine Dion look like insects.
Memorable Dialogue: A prime example of Stuff That Maria Says: “Book me a table at a cafe where the waiters know who I am. I’m in the mood for adulation.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: When Maria meets JFK, she immediately vies for the upper hand: “You look tired,” she says. “Never too tired for beauty,” is his reply. Witty, sure, but what if the beauty is tiresome? That’s the ax to grind with Maria, which overwhelms us with style but muddles the substance. Such is Larrain’s M.O. – he directs and directs and directs his films, and when he’s done, he directs them some more. Which leaves us feeling a weird melange of exhilaration, for the audacious filmmaking, and annoyance, for, well, the audacious filmmaking.
Which is to say, all the ornate set dressing, time-hopping, self-indulgent camerawork, self-aware writing, self-conscious performances and shifts in visual texture tend to wear you out when there isn’t enough emotional efficacy to keep our hearts engaged. Larrain and Jolie’s interpretation of Callas is maddening, seemingly by design, as homage to her larger-than-life status. She’s so frail and vulnerable, yet maintains a a miles-thick concrete ego-facade, the apparently natural product of massive fame and talent. There’s the prevailing notion that such kiss-my-hem haughtiness is less an affectation than simply who Maria is, who she became, which is the type of person who maintains an absurd degree of poise during her campaign of self-destruction.
The trouble is, Larrain never connects the dots of the character’s psyche, even subtextually. The film feels too preoccupied with its own superficialities, too aware of its own pervasive stylistic flourishes to open up. It daren’t ever allow an earnest moment lest it cease being mysterious and opaque – and we can’t help but feel put off. Unlike the chilly-but-emotionally-raw Jackie and the gilded-cage surrealist drama of Spencer – the best of the three films, all of which play out during a few days of their subjects’ psychological torment. Watching Larrain’s films, especially the intently prickly Maria, is akin to trying to pet a cat that doesn’t want the attention – you want to show some love for this beautiful creature, but it wriggles out of your grip and claws you a little while doing it. And so you drop it and say fine and move on.
Our Call: Maria is too hard to love, despite Jolie’s effort and commitment. It borders on being a test of your tolerance for pretentiousness. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.