Angelina Jolie in ‘Maria’ (Photo – Netflix)
Getting old is no fun, and it’s worse when you’re opera legend Maria Callas.
Maria
Directed by Pablo Larraín– 2024
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
The film Maria, based on the last week of her life, shows La Callas (as she was known in her salad days) being interviewed, coddled by her two servants, and working with a pianist to recapture her voice that, at 53, has lost its force.
Frustrated with the practice sessions, she strolls around Paris recalling when, in the major opera houses of the world, she parked and barked to acclaim, bringing audiences to their feet. (That is, when her own feet brought her to the venue; apparently, she had problems showing up.)
The afterglow of those heady times is as cold as the light inside a refrigerator. Maria is anorexic, a pill head, and despite her loneliness doesn’t suffer fools or admirers gladly. Childhood poverty, as much as anything else, explains her marriage to the overbearing and very rich Aristotle Onassis; JFK makes a brief appearance and seems to wonder why her fame hasn’t made her happy.
Maria is played by Angelina Jolie whose cheekbones, jawline, and wide mouth seem almost weaponized by her thin frame. In a flicker of her eyes she can express an emotion, even a half-emotion—though most of them are within a spectrum of sadness. One is almost relieved to see, in one sequence, her playing cards and laughing with the servants. Perhaps it’s a performance of surface and technique, but is effective nonetheless, a symphony of nuances which go full throttle at the film’s end, as if to second Maria’s belief that great music comes out of suffering… and sometimes good movies do, too.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Laemmle Glendale and Netflix.
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