The interiors set the mood in “Maria,” the latest gilded-edged biopic from Pablo Larraín. Crisp and sparkling, the look-don’t-touch aura of Maria Callas’ (Angelina Jolie) decadent home is a foil for her crowded, restless mind, where most of the actual action takes place. Larraín and Writer Steven Knight present a sumptuous visual world—thanks to ace Cinematographer Ed Lachman—adorned in incandescent autumnal colors, a stark contrast to the patchy, dark mental state where Maria finds herself during the final week of her life. Rushing to judge and then even quicker to backpedal, “Maria” is cornered when it slows down to explain and introduce standard, hackneyed biopic backstory. But, behold La Callas! She’s more than her addiction, suffering and death. So when she’s allowed to breathe and seek, especially in a series of surrealistic, near hallucinatory flourishes, the film does service to Maria’s grand artistic fervor and muddied private life.
Jolie and a solid supporting cast—including the consummate scene-stealer/rescuer Alba Rohrwacher—“Maria” provide a sturdy foundation to counter any perfunctory or half-baked sequences. But Larraín’s Callas is often sketched roughly as a disturbed, tormented diva, and the life details offered amount to an extended Wikipedia entry, a speculative account of her downfall. Callas lives in a massive home, accompanied by her primary caretakers and sole life companions Bruna (Rohrwacher) and Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino). While Bruna cooks, cleans and nurses Maria’s ego (calling Maria’s middling kitchen rehearsal “magnificent”), Ferruccio is the doting, yet stern hired hand. When he’s not obeying Maria’s orders to move an enormous piano (a gag that violates the rule of three), he’s reminding her about a doctor’s orders or defending her against nosy irritants (in one case: an aggressive journalist).
Angelina Jolie and a Solid Supporting Cast
And then there’s Mandrax. The human iteration, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, is evidently a figment of Maria’s imagination. Mandrax interviews her about Maria’s life, career, and comeback, and when his questions aren’t sufficiently probing, Maria encourages him to be more persistent. Jolie’s strongest in these moments, that radiant star power over matches a game counterpoint in the tranquil, quietly menacing McPhee. The other Mandrax, a powerful sedative, hides in Maria’s drawers and eventually, her coat pockets, after a doctor warns her current intake will kill her. That warning, she ignored, just as she brushes off the warnings of Bruna and Ferruccio. Maria finds elusive comfort and uplift in daily piano recitals, but Mandrax’s hold is too strong, the descent of La Callas’ fall from—artistic, romantic, etc.—grace too steep to rebound.
Inevitably, catching up with Maria’s future will require an extended gaze to the past. And so the film name-drops (Jackie Onassis on several occasions) and star gazes (Marilyn! JFK!), which seems less like a link to Callas’ cultural heft than a plodding self-homage. Larraín’s “Jackie” (2016) was, after all, the first in his trilogy of “lady with heels” biographies. (Also: Jolie’s Maria also, to me, looks conspicuously similar to Portman’s Jackie.) The monochrome flashbacks explain but don’t enrich Maria’s story, keeping the film on a rather predictable, risk-averse fairway. And yet, Lachman’s glimmering universe and Jolie’s commanding presence buck the conventional components. Maria’s mind might be a dangerous place, but it also houses the film’s abundant bursts of pleasure, including when she walks past the Eiffel Tower and a ragtag choir emerges, bursting out into a thrilling rendition of “The Anvil Song” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
Larraín Tells Too Much
Overall though, the halting momentum and delicate tone of “Maria” shields it from the ambiguity which would’ve opened Callas life to interpretation. Instead, it’s all dictated to us: difficult childhood (her mother made her sing to soldiers), troubled romances (Aristotle Onassis forbade her from singing), pill addiction and an early death, leaving only intermittent peepholes of joy and independence. The most unreliable narrator then, might not be Maria, it’s Larraín, who shrinks his subject down to a digestible size, and the periodic electricity and arresting imagery only partially makes up for. Music is what moved her, and when it’s allowed to appear out of thin air, the film shows signs of life. Maybe that’s how it was for Maria: controlled at every corner—by her mother, men and drugs—but always letting the music in. It belonged to her, not them, so Maria’s death allowed her to wrest back control.
“Maria” screened at New York Film Festival, which runs from September 27 – October 14th. Follow us for more coverage.
