“There is no life away from the stage.”
Plenty of famous women have tried their hand at playing Maria Callas at one time or another. Dixie Carter and Faye Dunaway each brought her to life on the stage via Terrence McNally’s acclaimed play Master Class. After her stage run, Dunaway famously tried to bring the play to the screen after securing the film rights for what was to be her feature directing debut which ultimately never happened. Years later, director Mike Nichols recruited Meryl Streep for their own version of the play, which likewise never took shape. It’s understandable that a life as storied and well-documented as Maria Callas’ was never going to be an easy time getting to the screen, requiring just the right actress/director combination to make it happen. The collaboration between director Pablo Larrain and Angelina Jolie proves to be the right one as the pair have succeeded in making a film that the real-life Maria might not have especially liked, but would still have had to admire.
Set in the late 1970s, Larrain’s film offers up a somewhat imagined glimpse into the world of Maria Callas (Jolie) as she enters the last stages of her life. With only her housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) as her faithful companions, we see one of the greatest talents who ever lived trying desperately to sing once more.
While Larrain has made films in which his subjects have had a complicated relationship with the outside world, this is the first time he’s tackled the topic of fame in this way. Maria is a woman constantly battling fame. When it comes to fame, she’s engaged in a battle of wills with it, having spent years navigating it and fiercely keeping it at arm’s length. Yet regardless of her reputation for being tough, or the decades of intense scrutiny she’s had to endure, Maria still finds herself being drawn to that very element that brought fame to her. Maria does well in illustrating the struggle its subject had with the persona of La Callas, who had become someone bigger than she could control. One of Maria‘s driving motifs is her fear of not knowing who the character was beyond the diva she was hailed as. It speaks volumes that Maria spends large amounts of the film trying to understand herself through the few people she allowed in her life towards the end, as well as through the device of a TV interview which may or may not be taking place in her own mind.
In Larrain’s vision of Maria, music exists as the only permanent, real element in her life. When she’s surrounded by and exuding opera, it is the only time and place where she can genuinely express true freedom. Maria takes some time to touch on the harsh realities of its subject’s childhood and how she could never fully escape it, no matter how renowned she became. The only place where she considered herself free and safe was when she was surrounded by opera. The film paints the art form as Maria’s shelter from the storm and the only place where she was ever truly her actual self. It was that kinship and bond towards opera that she clung to despite it taking her on a journey that she could not control. Larrain’s film wonderfully presents Maria’s desire to not let go of opera in her multiple sessions with a pianist and in the scattered moments when she’s singing in her own home. In both cases, we see a deeply vulnerable Maria who is trying to prove to herself that she’s still got what’s needed to be the artist she’s been known as for so long.
By now Larrain has proven that he has an eye for seeing the inner lives of famous women and recognizing them in other famous women. It’s for this reason that Jolie is not only spectacular as Maria when it comes to the great lady’s accent and movement but also when it comes to tapping into her hidden self. The actress brings out Maria’s fragility, her longing, and her reluctance to give up that place in the world she has created for herself. Documentary footage has often shown a feisty Callas, but Jolie’s nuanced interpretation doesn’t rely on replicating any diva tactics. Instead, what she cares about most is the woman behind the reputation. It’s the actress’ mystery to uncover and she doesn’t shy about diving head first into it.
From the technical side, Maria is another Larrain work of art. The cinematography by Edward Lachman captures both the feeling of Paris and the spirit of the late 1970s perfectly, giving us a stellar glimpse into the world Maria existed in towards the end of her life. A Jackie tie-in later in the film comes as a surprise, but it is a welcome reminder that Larrain has completed his bold and brilliant trio of films. Maria follows in the footsteps of Jackie and Spencer in the way it earnestly tries to explore the woman at her core, away from the image the outside world thrust upon her. Unlike the first two films, however, Larrain seems more in awe with Maria, allowing himself to be more human in his storytelling than he was with his other two films. While Jackie dealt with trying to honor history, Spencer opted for surrealism. With Maria, the filmmaker has gone for the soul…and captured it beautifully.
