Maria begins at the end, with the death of Maria Callas in her Paris apartment. The great soprano passed away in 1977, less than three months shy of her 53rd birthday, leaving behind a life and career filled with triumph and scandal, and a place in music history reserved for only a few. Similar to Pablo Larraín's films about Princess Diana and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the director examines "La Callas" through the scope of a particular event instead of the cradle-to-grave biopic treatment. In the legendary opera singer's case, Larraín's lens captures the final events of Maria Callas's life.
For those unfamiliar with Callas, Maria is a close look about life and death — what it is to feel yourself at death's doorstep — rather than the story of a singer. In the performance of a lifetime, Angelina Jolie gently guides audiences into the mind and heart of a woman slowly losing her grip on reality, but still tethered to parts of this world. Similar to Florian Zeller's The Father, where we witness the demise of the titular patriarch through his eyes, Larraín creates a perspective not accurate to actual reality, but accurate to Maria's reality.
We follow Maria as she takes coffee appointments in cafés, has private singing lessons to understand her current vocal abilities, and walks around Paris. At times, a reporter joins her, a young man named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), asking her questions about key moments in her life, professionally and personally. Larraín elevates this line of questioning and Maria's responses with flashbacks to her as a young girl living in Axis-occupied Greece during World War II being forced by her mother to perform for German soldiers, her love affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and, of course, her many stage performances, including a particularly beautiful rendering of her time spent in Japan.
Larraín builds this world as a dreamscape using the beauty of Paris to create an almost fugue state — a note that proves itself to be very apropos as La Callas's mental state becomes exposed. Jolie's performance throughout the entire film is truly exemplary, but it particularly connects when Maria's vulnerability seeps through. Larraín and Steven Knight's script portray Maria as relying heavily on prescription medication, much to the dismay of those closest to her, and those medications causing her to see and hear people who aren't real, like Mandrax, whose double-meaning name eventually holds great importance.
Just as with Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart, Larraín casts an actor at just the right time in her career to portray the film's subject, and not because of her age. Although Jolie only trails La Callas by a few years, what lends the performances such a remarkable weight is the heaviness on Maria's shoulders that Jolie carries with such understanding and empathy.
Maria Callas, I learned after watching Maria, belongs to a very select group of extraordinary people in history whose impact on culture will reverberate centuries beyond their lifetime. As with many of these unique individuals, by all accounts, Callas possessed an atypical charisma and talent that enveloped all those in her orbit, in a manner inexplicable to even Callas herself. While that characteristic may seem enviable, it raises the unanswerable question: "Why me?"
While Jolie probably doesn't belong to this particular group of very extraordinary individuals, she has led an extraordinary life that has been subject to public judgment and (at times) ridicule. Perhaps this underlying connection is what allows Jolie the ability to grant Maria Callas a tremendous amount of grace and patience that wasn't always afforded to the singer in her lifetime. Jolie doesn't present a woman burdened by fame or tortured by the question of "Why me?" but one who simply lives with the knowledge and bubbling frustration of knowing she'll never understand a significant part of her own existence, only heightening her retrospection with Mandrax.
The imprint Maria Callas left on opera and music as a whole is indelible, and, given her contributions, it's almost expected a level of scandal follows. Larraín doesn't spend much time on that side of Callas's life, instead focusing on the effects of how those events build up over a lifetime. We aren't spending time with a singer in her prime, but looking back at a life lived knowing the end is near, creating a far more profound biopic.
Larraín moves through Maria slowly — for effect, and out of respect. Callas burned brightly and wildly, and, in turn, she extinguished quickly. By moving at an unhurried pace, Larraín allows Callas's life to smoulder, and with Jolie's sublime portrayal, Callas illuminates the stage once more.