Is Maria worth watching?

Pablo Larraín’s Maria is a profound and emotionally charged portrayal of the last years of Maria Callas, the legendary Greek-American soprano. Centered on her struggle to reconnect with her voice, the film is as much a reflection on the artistry and toll of fame as it is a meditation on the genre of the celebrity biopic itself. With Angelina Jolie in the role of Callas, the film takes a bold approach, embracing subjective realism to explore the singer’s psychological decline and the complex layers of her identity.

As the final chapter in Larraín’s trilogy of biographical films about iconic 20th-century women, following Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021), Maria shares thematic and stylistic elements with its predecessors. All three films, co-written by Steven Knight, delve deep into the minds of their subjects, blurring the lines between external reality and internal perception. In Maria, Larraín and Knight once again use subjectivity as a tool, constructing a narrative that gives viewers access to Callas’ troubled psyche, distorted by both the pressures of fame and her own emotional turmoil.

In a striking narrative twist, the film employs the device of Callas writing her autobiography, accompanied by a hallucinatory filmmaker named Mandrax, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. Mandrax helps Callas recount her life, though his involvement, like everything in the film, is filtered through her distorted vision. This narrative framing allows the film to blur the line between fact and fiction, offering a meta-commentary on the limitations of biographical storytelling.

The structure of Maria is marked by a self-aware use of cinematic techniques: acts are introduced with film slates, different formats are employed to distinguish between various storytelling modes, and the camera occasionally adopts a documentary style, further reinforcing the notion that the film is a constructed representation of Callas’ life rather than an attempt at a literal retelling. Through these methods, Larraín effectively challenges the conventions of the biopic genre, which often prioritizes historical accuracy over narrative innovation.

In addition to exploring Callas’ personal battles, Maria doesn’t shy away from the more sensational aspects of her life, including her troubled relationship with Aristotle Onassis, played by Haluk Bilginer, and her strained relationship with her domineering mother. These elements are depicted with theatrical flair, as the film revels in the operatic drama of Callas’ existence.

Angelina Jolie’s performance as Maria Callas is nothing short of extraordinary. She brings depth and complexity to the character, capturing the diva’s unapologetic bravado and vulnerability with equal intensity. The emotional core of the film lies in the relationships between Callas and her loyal servants, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), who try to manage the remnants of her fame while protecting her from herself. Their devotion is juxtaposed with the coldness of the world that has abandoned Callas once she could no longer perform at the same level, highlighting the cruel nature of celebrity.

Maria is a challenging and ambitious film that uses its subject’s life to interrogate the broader conventions of the biographical film. By embracing subjectivity and the blurred lines between reality and representation, it stands as a triumph in its genre, a bold statement that refuses to be bound by the expectations of traditional biopics. It is an intimate, devastating portrait of a woman who gave everything to her art but was left broken and forgotten by the very world that once adored her.

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