AVE MARIA

Pablo Larraín's Maria (2024) is by no means a perfect film—far from it—but I found a rare humanity in Angelina Jolie's portrayal of the tragic soprano that surprised me, though I’m not sure why it should have. Perhaps it’s because actors portraying real-life subjects often over-dramatise their work inhabiting such roles as part of the studio’s bid for an Oscar. The promotion for this film seems surprisingly low-key, considering that a woman of Jolie's star power is playing one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century.

There is also an added poignancy in knowing that Jolie, who has faced her own struggles with illness, could so deeply connect with a portrait of Callas during the final days of her life in Paris. If you consider that the film is essentially structured like an extended mad scene from an Italian bel canto opera by Bellini or Donizetti, its somewhat bizarre narrative approach begins to make more sense. Maria (Jolie) is depicted hallucinating between reality and dream, the present and the past. Complementing Jolie's somnambulistic performance is the dreamy atmosphere of Paris, presented with a soft-focus aesthetic reminiscent of Bertolucci's The Conformist.

Strangely, the film also reminded me of a unique old Italian television series called La famiglia Ricordi (The Ricordi Saga, 1995), which charted the history of the famous music publishers who worked with Italian opera composers like Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Puccini. That series included the tragic tale of soprano Maria Malibran, who, like Callas, was closely connected to the works of Bellini and Donizetti. There was a striking symbiosis between the high drama and melodrama of the operas these composers created and the drama of their personal lives. Maria fits well within this tradition of intermeshing life and art.

If I had been asked to write a biopic of Callas, I might have been tempted to focus more linearly on the dramatic transformation she underwent—from a larger woman to a more slender one. Whether or not the rumours about her physical metamorphosis are true—that she supposedly consumed a pill or tablet containing an embryonic tapeworm (Taenia saginata)—the dramatic weight loss that she experienced over eighteen months subsequently changed both her life and the world of opera in significant ways.

First, Callas became increasingly glamorous to audiences and the press, which made her performances even more compelling. Her portrayals of consumptive characters like Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata or Mimì in Puccini's La Bohème gained a visceral realism that amplified the pathos of these tragic roles. Second, the psychological impact and physical toll of these radical changes to her appearance quite quickly began to affect the strength and sustainability of her vocal instrument. I would have explored the deterioration of her voice as a narrative structure, tracing its ill fated trajectory from a rich, vibrant tone to the thinner, vibrato-heavy sound with the infamous “wobble.” This would have provided an opportunity to examine the correlation between her obsessive devotion to her art, her image, and the toll it took on her until her death.

Regardless of my hypothetical approach, as it stands, Maria is a decent film because Jolie imbues her characterisation with sufficient warmth, humanity, and complexity. I’ll return to it for that reason alone.