‘Maria’ Review: Angelina Jolie Hits The High Notes As Doomed Diva Maria Callas In Pablo Larraín’s Curiously Bloodless Biopic – Venice Film Festival
deadline.comNo director working today has a greater command of the medium than the Chilean maestro Pablo Larraín, whose previous achievements in the generally unloved biopic genre — Jackie and Spencer — are now joined by his sweeping reimagining of the last days of Maria Callas.
Every element in Maria speaks of that mastery: the first deep-focus shots of Callas’ lush Parisian apartment, where the light through the window is transfigured into a kind of mist; the bold and brilliant use of diegetic music, so essential to conjuring Callas’ world; and the elegant merger of past and present, dream and reality.
Maria Callas died in 1977, aged 53, and, as anyone even faintly interested in opera knows, she had a life of tumult, torment and tragedy that was itself operatic in scope.
The events in Steven Knight’s finely constructed script take place over one week, but Callas (Angelina Jolie) spends much of that time relating or remembering fragments of the past, inviting the viewer to piece them together to form a life.
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