Maria

Released 2024. Director: Pablo Larraín

MARIA FOLLOWS JACKIE AND SPENCER AS THE THIRD of director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy about famous women, specifically, famous women at the saddest time in their lives.

Jackie is about the former First Lady dealing with the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy. Spencer shows us Princess Diana’s miserable Christmas with her in-laws feeling like a total outsider. Maria takes us into the final week in the life of opera diva Maria Callas and just like Jackie and Diana, Maria feels utterly alone and bereft of love. No longer in the spotlight, Maria lives as a recluse, surrounded by mementos and memories of her glory days and her love affair with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (who eventually married the widowed Jackie Kennedy).

In many ways the three movies are similar, sharing the same stencil of tone and style. The dominant creative impetus is to explore a state of mind and a mood, while plot and narrative are secondary to emotional vibes and aesthetics. When you're looking at Edward Lachman’s elegant and emotive cinematography, you feel what the movie is trying to articulate.

All three movies also owe their weight to a strong central performance that you couldn’t take your eyes away from – Jackie was played by Natalie Portman, Diana by Kristen Stewart and both were Oscar-nominated. Maria is a welcome change from a slew of action-oriented roles for Angelina Jolie, one that reminds us she can find the stillness of a character and share her melancholy without either looking blank (as she did in Beyond Borders) or the need to over-emote (as she did in The Changeling).

Jolie expresses the loneliness and joyless existence with solemn poise even as she manages to keep us at arm’s length. Her Maria doesn’t invite us into her inner sanctum. She’s sad and also cold and distancing. Maria doesn’t know at the time how bad her health has become (until it’s too late), cocooned in a bubble of isolation without family or friends. Her wealth affords her a lavish lifestyle which is all gloom and whim of a rich lady with not much to do. Move the piano over there, she’d order her butler one morning. Now move it in front of the window, she’d order the next day.

Floating through this seemingly purposeless sentimental haze popping an assortment of pills and sitting at cafes “to be adored”, what Maria desperately wants to do is find her voice again. She sees a conductor several times to sing to an empty concert hall while he plays on the piano, but the former greatest opera singer in the world struggles to reach her best. Age and heavy demands in the past have taken a toll on her instrument.

While I find this to be a remarkable performance from Jolie, it’s also a grand, superlative showcase of an insular victimhood I have difficulty engaging with. Maria wallows in her unhappiness wrapped up in hallucinations and recollections. If not for the devotion of her faithful butler and housekeeper, she wouldn’t be able to make a cup of tea, let alone survive.

Unlike Jackie and Diana, who found a new direction at the end of their movies, the tragic end for Maria is inevitable. You can see quite plainly what Larraín is trying to do with his heavy-handed staging of Maria’s dying moments. In a little corner of Paris life pauses and every person stops, looking up in awe as Maria Callas, for the very last time, performs an aria by Puccini from behind an apartment window.

Instead of moving, however, the scene is unsubtle and calculating, designed to impress upon us that Maria’s singing has the power to bring people together. And then Maria dies and Larraín drags on with the after-death arrangement, lingering to milk the last drop of sympathy and completely weakening what little impact he’s achieved earlier.

Ironic, that a movie about the final days of one of opera’s most dramatic sopranos should end up a one-note affair.

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