Maria (2024) Review: A Stunning Docudrama

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

Five years ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing writer-director Tom Volk’s documentary film, Maria by Callas, an intimate account of this 20^th century operatic icon that blended readings from her letters and diaries with televised interviews and film clips from a number of her performances. Chilean director Pablo Larraín wisely chose to take Steven Knight’s original script to create a docudrama focusing on Callas’s final days in her lavish Paris apartment. Interjecting cinematographer Ed Lachman’s numerous black-and-white scenes about the diva’s history provide contrast with the gorgeous color shots covering live performances (lip-synced by star Angelina Jolie) and the last chapters of the diva’s life.

Following the Callas recording of “Ave Maria” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, Maria opens with a medical team and police in the apartment to remove her dead body. What ensues is a tenderly reconstructed life story of a star who burned brightly if ever so briefly when she died at only 53 years of age.  As Callas’s history unfolds, we see her being urged to pursue a vocal career by her manipulative mother Litsa (Lydia Koniordou). Doors finally open for her in the opera world after she marries the wealthy and much older Giovanni Battista Meneghini (Alessandro Bressanello) who frequently looks the other away as many other men try to insinuate themselves into Callas’s life after her dramatic 80-pound weight loss. However, it was Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) who engaged her in a long-lasting love affair, even after he married Jacqueline Kennedy, that only ended with his death in 1975, two years before Callas ‘s own demise.

Larraín deals very sympathetically with growing vocal difficulties that Callas began to experience which, as it happens, resulted from the combination of overwork, self-doubt, and muscular deterioration likely caused by dermatomyositis. Much of this film examines the final days and months of her life and introduces viewers to her devoted domestic staff, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and Ferrucio (Pierfrancesco Favino), and later to her personal physician, Dr. Fontainebleau (Vincent Macaigne) who is frustrated by Callas’s unwillingness to follow his medical advice. During Callas’s waning days, her mental state declines and she hallucinates about having a film biography made by Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as performance images appear and disappear  while she remains cloistered in her apartment until the reprise of the film’s death scene.

Angelina Jolie was only four years younger than Callas at the time this film was shot and, taking a page out of Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, she wore a prosthesis to give her nose a more “Greek”appearance. Prosthesis aside, Jolie completely invested herself in the diva’s character, including her mannerisms and accented English. She studied voice to enable her to append her own singing to that of the vocally failing Callas near the end of the movie. Other commendable performances are rendered by Rohrwacher, Favino and Smit-McPhee, but highest supporting performance accolade must go to Bilginer who looks and acts like an Onassis reincarnation. As the third installment in Larraín’s films involving noteworthy women, the two predecessors being Jackie and Spencer about Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana, respectively, Maria ends up with the strongest portrayal of its leading female character. To director Larraín’s credit, this film about opera is suffused with operatic moments, including 10 complete performances of signature arias from the archives of Callas’s own recordings. This visually stunning movie was considerably strengthened by Guy Hendrix Dyas’s production design, Sandro Piccarozzi’s set decoration, and Massimo Cantini’s costumes.   For me, Maria recalled the first opera performance that I attended as a 10-year-old—Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma with La Callas as the lead. It moved me to tears then as this new film does now and receives one of my highest recommendations for 2024.

Maria is streaming now on Netflix 

• Rating Certificate: R (for some language including a sexual reference)
• Studios & Distributors: The Apartment | Komplizen Films | Fabula | FilmNation Entertainment
• Director: Pablo Larraín
• Written By: Steven Knight
• Country: Italy | Germany | United States
• Language: English | Greek
• Run Time: 124 Mins.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1