‘MARIA’ REVIEW: The Maria Callas Cult

A critical look at Angelina Jolie’s latest star-turn as  opera’s most worshipped—and contested—legend…

By Elio Iannacci

“I’m not hungry. I come to restaurants to be adored.” This line—plucked from the new movie Maria—a Pablo Larrain-directed cinematic elegy to Maria Callas— can be counted as one of the picture’s most delicious morsels of dialogue. It’s delivered icily by Angelina Jolie, who ambitiously takes on the role of a lifetime: embodying the great template of all divas—opera soprano Maria Callas. In many scenes Jolie is showcased in stunning black and white frames (think Stephen Meisel/’90s Vogue) as well as vivid closeups which resemble AI-versions of Caravaggio paintings. Jolie, ever the Hollywood star, is constantly being adored by Larrain’s lens whether Callas is in a restaurant or not. Various filters, angles, lighting set-ups and shades seem to all dazzle and support her star-turn. It’s breathtaking and fantastic to see the eco-system of aesthetics and sets swirl around Jolie.

Maria follows Larrain’s previous movies—which bank of the same high production values. He’s previously revisited iconic figures in Jackie in 2016 (tracing the life of Jacqueline Kennedy) and Spencer in 2021 (which focuses on Princess Diana and her struggle in the spotlight). Unlike those two boldface names, Maria, was and is known as a champion performer whose personal past is intrinsic to her art and, oddly enough, her last days on earth (which this film is mainly about).

There are many beautiful things to look out for in this lush film that will satiate and aggravate members of the Maria Callas Cult. The costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini (specifically the opulent dressing gowns) and the jewelry and accessories (recreated pearl necklaces and gloves from Callas’s closet) are stars in this show. These bold aesthetics—paired with Jolie’s exquisite nail game and supporting actors (specifically newcomer Aggelina Papadopoulou)—do an exceptional job of casting a solid illusion.

Yet hidden in various pockets of scenes—many of which refuse to have a clear-cut narrative or any semblance of conventional linear storytelling—there are a great deal of sophisticated easter eggs which require multiple views to find. This is mainly due to the number of flashbacks, hallucinations and delusions coming from the main character, a woman known as La Divina (a crown title that Italian opera queens bestowed on Callas after her La Scala performances). Callas’s larger-than-life ego (as interpreted by the larger-than-life Jolie) is hinted at in whisps of past moments where she is reigning supreme in cocktail parties, yacht cruises or off-duty public appearances. These fierce Callas snippets—where she is at her most regal—morph into the film scarcely and without warning. The reason so much of Callas’s personal history is mined in this way is simply because the icon has so much rich backstory that a 4-season series on her life would barely scratch the surface of her career trajectory (let alone a 2-hour and 3-minute motion picture). Yet this film isn’t really about spotlighting any of that occupational glory properly. Instead, it focuses on the toll it—and her relationships—have taken. Jolie’s close-ups may be many but they mightily spell out the emotional fervor of Callas in a rather lethargic downward spiral. The movie prizes so many private moments where Jolie-as-Callas is presiding over ornate side tables of spilled prescription pills and reliving rough break-up heartache from the memory of longtime beau Aristotle Onassis (she found out he was married to Jackie Kennedy one day while reading a newspaper). There is a rather dreamy and muddled comeback plot but Callas’s resilience isn’t something that rises from it. Jolie has a lot on her plate to deal in the film with because Callas—as anyone can see via her many past interviews posted on YouTube right now—could jump from being tender to fiery in a snap. In other words, she was as nuanced and multi-dimensional as the full throng of complex characters she played on stage.

A large part of this movie will inspire a sea of contention for fans, critiques and scholars who feel that dramatizing Callas’s romantic letdowns and her misuse of prescription drugs is not only unfair but inaccurate.

For those who want to see a side of the soprano that has yet to be seen before, there is a literary solution. Sophia Lambton’s The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography, is a 668-page tome which argues against many of the Callas legends which paint her as a broken-hearted, Valley of The Dolls-like caricature whose temperament was monstrous until it was damned and diminished by a lover.

“A big misconception about Callas was that she was this giant cliché of a diva,” says Lambton, explaining that Callas was and still is commonly painted as difficult, very unprofessional and someone with a rather short temper. “There are so many facts that are wrong about her that keep getting repeated,” Lambton notes. “Callas died of a heart attack—not a broken heart. She was also an artist who  tried to try to psychologically incarnate a role, which was not common for her era of opera. To prepare for work, she would assume how her character sang, walked or held a cup based on her own background research and personal connection. This made Callas very relatable and allowed her to have so much empathy.”

In Maria, Jolie gets the tender, sober, smoldering part of Callas’s personality down pat. It’s the tension of the singer’s artistic heart that is harder for Jolie to master. This is especially challenging when Jolie lip-synchs classic arias in distracting, frizzy wigs that really should have been reconsidered. Hair issues aside, many key scenes do display Jolie’s mercurial aura in a way which reflects Callas’s essence. These are moments in long scenes where Jolie is filmed seated alone or with no more than 3 actors around her in spaces which reimagine Callas’s Parisian apartment—a venue decked out in décor that looks like it belongs in the Vatican’s storage units. Even with so much ornamentation, Jolie manages to lure the viewer with her dark expressions, graceful hand gestures and longing glances. In these fine and quiet moments in the film, Jolie’s emotional gradations are so detailed that they would have made Callas proud.

To those who are truly know Callas’s legacy, it is a quite a shock that the film does not mine her connection to key collaborators such as Franco Zeffirelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini. To not include these two grand Queer figures in Italian art—ones who were famously transformed by the diva (and helped transform her work)—is such a monumental miss. The presence of both would have given much needed context to why and how Callas reshaped our notions of music and point to how tore down convention with them. Callas’s legacy is steeped in Queer defiance yet Maria holds none of it within its script.

“I think Pasolini and Callas were both committed to creating their own worlds — away from the ones they were given,” Lambton says of the rigid, conservative and often patriarchal systems of oppression that the film industry and the opera world is notorious for. They were fascinating and rare because they were both defiant and had to combat various standards of their own respective periods.”

Maria doesn’t harken back to Callas’s defiant or divine period but it does do something that counters so much of today’s conventional cinema, The film’s tempo simmers. It goes against all the usual Hollywood studio focus groups begging for fast-paced Tik-Tok-esque content. It veers from films that copy the zinger-laden Housewives catchphrases on TV and refuses to fast-forward itself into something suitable for digital culture. It is a slow burn of a movie that resents the click-crazed customs of today, delivering images and dialogue with a gradual ease and a grandeur that is nowhere to be found online.

Maria, the 2024 biopic about the life of opera singer Maria Callas, will be released in select theaters in Canada on November 27, 2024. It will be available to stream on MUBI in Canada on December 11, 2024.