Biographical dramas tend to be polarizing affairs. Many prefer their biopics to be something akin to slavishly devoted documentary works, nitpicking at every historical inaccuracy and creative liberty. The reaction to Maria, the final instalment in Pablo Larrain’s trilogy of films intimately exploring the lives of influential twentieth century women (the first two being Jackie and Spencer), has been no different. Hardly surprising, perhaps, given the rabid devotion of Maria Callas’ most fervent fans. Lamenting the sanitized quality of the singing (star Anjelina Jolie’s voice has been mixed with recordings of Callas), as well as Larrain’s flexible relationship with reality, many dispute that he has managed to capture the legendary diva’s essence at all. While entitled to their opinions, I tend to think they’ve entirely missed the point. Rather than deliver a prosaic accounting of past events, what Larrain does in these films is enable a dialogue about the truths evoked by these women’s lives, allowing the audience to parse out the different perspectives they incite. The essence of truth, in a broader philosophical sense, seems far more interesting to Larrain, than the facts.
Expanding on the scope of the earlier works in the trilogy, Larrain nevertheless manages to achieve a similar feeling of intimacy, while at once delivering a technical and emotional grandeur fitting of such a grand operatic figure. Offering up a fantastical imagining of the final week of Callas’ life, Larrain quickly establishes the singer as an imperious and delicately temperamental figure, swanning about her lavish Paris apartment, speaking in philosophical riddles and popping pills, much to the concern of her devoted housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), and butler Ferruccio (Pierfranceso Favino). When she declares a television crew to be on their way to interview her, Ferruccio expresses his skepticism as to their existence, but seems accustomed to her imaginings.
Whether Callas actually had a drug problem, or ever experienced hallucinations, is up for debate, but the conceit offers Larrain a useful and elegant mechanism by which to explore not only her remembrances of her life, but to muse upon them at length. In a knowing wink to the audience, when the crew knocks at the door, the interviewer (Kodi Smit-McPhee) introduces himself as Mandrax – La Divina’s drug of choice. As they wander about a beautifully realized 1970s Paris, flipping through episodes of the past, the film takes on a nostalgic feeling, mixing carefully chosen archival footage and meticulously staged re-creations.
Indeed, the costumes and the sets are more lushly realized than anything I’ve seen in recent memory, with no detail going unnoticed by designers Massimo Cantini Parrini and Maria Djurkovic. At one point, Jolie wields the most dramatic looking umbrella I’ve ever laid eyes upon as she strolls up to the fantastical sight of an orchestra in white coats playing away in the autumnal rain, beckoning a wave of red-clad geishas bearing lanterns shuffling through a russet carpet of leaves, opening up to reveal Callas herself in all her glory, dressed to perfection as Madama Butterfly. The film is stuffed to the brim with such stunning set pieces, and they are an absolute pleasure to behold.
Much has been made of the singing in the film, most of which mixes the voice of Jolie (who spent months training for the film) with recording of the real Callas’. Opera purists have lamented the resulting loss of artistic impact, but the effect seems appropriate given the well-known decline in the quality of the diva’s voice in the later years of her life. By this point in her life, Callas had declined to perform publicly in years, unwilling to subject herself to the expectations of her audience, whom she asserts expect miracles she can no longer perform.
The film ends on a fantastically hopeful note, with Maria singing one last triumphant aria, expending every last bit of life she has left, as passersby stop to listen in the street. This never happened, of course. It is but a hopeful fiction, giving the diva one final triumphal moment before we leave her behind. The moment undoubtedly teeters into melodrama, but feels a somehow fitting final tribute to a woman unironically known as La Divina.
Maria is currently streaming on Mubi.
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