At the top of her fame, when Maria Callas lived in New York and potential opera singers would lie, cheat, beg, steal or hock their rent money to gain admittance to one of her music lessons, the greatest soprano of the 20th century would close down every class promptly at 5 p.m. It didn’t matter if you were in the middle of a difficult aria you had been working on for weeks. The class was dismissed, and the door slammed shut when the clock struck five, so Diva Divina, as Callas was known, could rush home in time to watch re-runs of I Love Lucy.
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MARIA ★★ (2.5/4 stars) |
Little unknown facts like this would have made Maria¸the lushly visual but dramatically listless biopic about her life by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, a more revealing and entertaining movie. Mr. Larrain has done the same “poor me” job on two previous bloated bios of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana, and it was up to Natalie Portman in Jackie and Kristen Stewart in Spencer to bring their characters to life where the screenplays deserted them. Now it’s Angelica Jolie’s turn. She works hard to reveal the beauty and glory that made Callas world famous, even studying to duplicate that famous voice in some of the vocal segments. (An impossible task, to be sure, so Callas herself does most of the singing throughout. Be grateful for small favors, or in this case, a hugely dynamic one.) All three films are composed of the same elements—misery in life and a sad, wistful longing for the past. They’re all fragments of the same woman—sad, neurotic icons who climbed their way to the top of the ladder and found it lacking. There was so much more to all three of them that I personally find this trio of outlines lacking.
In Maria, what we already know from her turbulent life and talent should have guaranteed a saga of passion, but the plot fails to exist. The film begins and ends with Maria’s death on the floor of her palatial apartment in Paris in September 1977, gone at only 53. What fills the two hours in between are the last days of her tortured final week, rambling around in panic and fear through the empty rooms—her once-illustrious voice gone, her Mondrian eyes ghosts of their former expressiveness, addicted to prescription drugs, ignoring the ringing phone, talking unpersuasively about a comeback. The excuse for devoting more than two hours of luxury and time to such an unhappy, unfulfilled woman is simply an interview with a reporter from a TV show with the name Mandrax, which is the name of the pills she pops that contribute to her eventual demise. (Talk about pretentious symbolism!)
To make up for the film’s basic lethargy, it must be said that there is always plenty to look at. The visuals are gorgeous—from Ed Lachman’s sumptuous cinematography to lavish sets by Guy Hendrix Dyas and awesome costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini, each contributor an artist of inestimable value. Every element helps to distract from the clinkers Steven Knight’s script forces Ms. Jolie to say. A troubling combination of agonized self-doubt and unconquerable narcissism, she actually tells a waiter who comes to take her order: “I’m not hungry. I come to restaurants to be adored.” Scarce mention is made of either her cold, loveless marriage or her mysterious role as the mistress of Aristotle Onassis, who dumped her for Jacqueline Kennedy. Her best friends, sole confidantes and only reliable companions were her loyal maid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and strict, paternal, adoring butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), both excellent.
Much buzz fills the air and gossip columns about Angelina Jolie’s shoo-in nomination for an Oscar, which she richly deserves, but she’s proved on several occasions to be a more meticulous director than Pablo Larrain. Too bad she didn’t direct this film as well as enhancing it with her beauty. Maria is not a terrible movie, just a big disappointment.
