In Maria, Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas, one of the 20th Century's most prolific opera singers. The movie takes place over the course of the last week of her life in 1977 as she struggles with sedative dependency and a desire to reclaim her voice for herself.
The film is a fitting end to director Pablo Larraín's trilogy of iconic 20th-century women, which also includes 2016's Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, and 2021's Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. All three movies are about pivotal moments in their subjects' lives, and what's more pivotal than death? Opening with the last moments of her life, Maria's fragile mortality haunts the rest of the film.
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Maria shares a screenwriter with Spencer – Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight – but, while the latter featured Diana's struggle to keep her private and public lives separate, the film was ultimately primarily concerned with the pressures she felt within the royal family. Maria takes that a step further and establishes Callas as a woman who has lived her entire adult life as an object of public consumption. One of the film's earliest scenes is a montage of her past performances, interspersed with photo shoots, clippings of reviews of her concerts, and shots of fans and paparazzi banging on the windows of her car. The movie itself reflects this, too, with its three acts indicated by clapper boards – performance is as integral to the telling of Maria's story as it is to her life.
When we find Maria in 1977, she hasn't performed in four years and instead spends most of her time in her luxurious Paris apartment with only her devoted butler (Pierfrancesco Favino), housemaid (Alba Rohrwacher), and rails and rails of stage costumes she'll never wear again for company. Oh, and Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a medication-induced hallucination in the form of a documentary filmmaker making a movie about Maria's life. Even in delirium, she's performing for an audience.
Struggling to regain control over the powerful instrument of her voice after so many years off, Maria begins the film swearing she won't perform again. As the movie progresses, though, she sets out to sing one last time for herself, despite warnings from her doctor about what the stress will do to her body.
In flashbacks, we get glimpses of Maria's personal life, too – namely, her affair with Aristotle Onassis, the tycoon who would go on to marry Jackie Kennedy (such is the Pablo Larraín Cinematic Universe) and also forbade Maria from performing while they were together. Living in the thrall of an older partner with more power and sway? Maybe the protagonists of Larraín and Knight's last two collaborations have more in common than appears at first glance.
Maria arrives in UK cinemas on January 10 and is streaming now on Netflix in the US. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
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