In a 1983 televised tribute to Maria Callas, Leonard Bernstein referred to the soprano as “the bible of opera”, such was her impact upon the art form. Before her untimely death in 1977 at the age of 53, Callas had become one of the most revered and reviled figures in music, known for her distinctive voice and temperamental personality. In a 1955 newsreel of Callas rehearsing for a production of Bellini’s Norma, the narration cuttingly states “If you want to hear Callas, don’t get all dressed up. Just go to a rehearsal; she usually stays to the end of those.” But for all her flaws and perceived dramatics, there’s a reason Callas earned the nickname ‘La Divina’ in life; her talent was transcendental.
It is with Callas that Pablo Larraín, a long-time devotee of “difficult women”, concludes his trilogy of biopics that began with Jackie and continued with Spencer. His decision to reunite with Steven Knight (one of the most inconsistent screenwriters working today, capable of delivering the highest highs and lowest lows) is ominous, given his dire work on Spencer. Remarkably, where that film fell short, Maria soars, capturing Callas’ flighty nature and vulnerability with sensitivity and grace.
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Set in the final week of Callas’ life, she divides her time between rehearsals for a call time that will never come, arguments with her devoted but frustrated staff Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and imagined excursions around Paris with steely-eyed, sharply dressed British reporter Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), named for the sedatives she takes despite Ferruccio’s strong opposition. Then there are flashbacks to former lives, shot in dramatic black and white, as Maria fell in love with shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) only to watch him marry Jackie Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson, playing JFK for a third time after Jackie and Blonde, appears in a terse but amusing dinner scene that shows some of Callas’ exacting wit and disinterest in her American roots).
Both Larraín and Knight are avowed opera lovers, and this passion shows in Maria; its framing feels reminiscent of the great tragedies where a woman so often dies of a broken heart. Pulling from Callas’ incredible repertoire there are references to some of the roles she embodied so beautifully (Carmen; Cio-Cio-San; Tosca; Violetta) but the film’s greatest respect in this regard is its use of music. Jolie trained to sing opera for the role, and according to Larraín does sing a lot of the pieces used throughout, though some of Callas’ recordings were mixed with hers to create something that is not quite either woman, and the scenes appear dubbed rather than sung on-set. Perhaps opera devotees will have quibbles, but to the untrained ear, she possesses the gravitas and skill that one would expect in portraying the most famous soprano who ever lived.
In Jackie Kennedy, Natalie Portman found the role of a lifetime, and in Maria Callas so too does Angelina Jolie. It’s quite something to watch a woman as instantly recognisable as Jolie be so bewitching while playing someone else incredibly famous (always a challenge in biopics where footage of the subject exists) and without the layers of prosthetics that actors normally rely on to “transform”. Yet Jolie achieves such with a refined purr of a European accent and something equally feline in her gait. She is dainty and graceful, her magnetic gaze magnified behind stylish glasses, seeming to float through the grand rooms of her apartment, but also difficult and deceptive – a shrewd operator, an unabashed shark.
It is also difficult not to find some shades of Jolie herself in the tenderness and internal pain of Callas. Jolie doesn’t merely impersonate Callas, she embodies her – there is a radiance about her performance, determined to afford the subject the dignity and fondness that biopics often trade in favour of flashiness and hagiography. And while Knight, Larraín and Jolie clearly have much affection for Callas, this is not mere worship. Her temper and capriciousness are acknowledged, but so too is the suffering Callas endured, both as a girl and a woman. Callas herself would have hated to be thought of as another tragic heroine, so the film does not doom her to becoming another exquisite operatic corpse.
The gentleness of Rohrwacher and the paternal sternness of Favino balance Jolie; while the staff in Spencer were austere and cruel to the tragic heroine, here the hired help is the closest thing Callas has to family. Perhaps that sounds tragic, but the domesticity and love between Maria, Bruna and Ferruccio softens her diva persona, while the formality between Callas and Mandrax allow a fantastical element (as both Larraín and Knight are fond of) that feels more cohesive than the Anne Boleyn motif of Spencer.
Maria is a physically beautiful film, yes, with gorgeous cinematography by the reliably great Edward Lachman and exquisite costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini, but its pleasures are not merely surface. There’s an ethereal quality to Jolie’s performance that matches Callas’ legendary persona, and despite the deep sense of melancholy that pervades the film like a ghostly veil, this is still a love story – and one where the heroine lives forever.
