Maria Callas

This movie came as a pleasant surprise to me.

It is not only the great,studied performance by Jolie,an actress that hadn't really convinced me of her ability to act up to now. Nevertheless,in this movie,all the self-admiring,borderline narcissistic traits are absent.

Jolie,immerses herself in Maria's fragile, overall declining character and produces a more than convincing portrait worth accolades.

The representation of the era is quite meticulous too.

The really pleasant surprises are the directorial approach and the screenplay.

Focusing on her last week before dying it has a balanced approach to her memories through few flashbacks,her past and current relations,her adoration of music and opera,her failing health,her feeble attempts for a comeback,her warped perception of reality through the use of a slew of barbiturates,her nostalgia,her need for adulation and love. All in proper doses.

A fine two hours spent getting in touch with Maria..not the Callas!!!

I have to say director Pablo Larrain's 2024 entry into his iconic 20th-century women trilogy was a disappointment. It starts with the casting as Angelina Jolie may be too iconic herself to portray supreme diva Maria Callas, the least remembered of the trio, the other two being "Jackie" (2016) and Diana in "Spencer" (2021). Jolie conveys the necessary self-possession to carry off the regal image of the world's greatest opera singer, but physically she looks too skeletal to emulate convincingly the more robust figure Callas struck. Written by Steven Knight, the lugubrious, longish film covers the last week of Callas's life in 1977 Paris, a fictionalized account with inevitable flashbacks that cumulatively plays out like a ghost story. All the production elements like the burnished cinematography and set details are impressively handled, but Larrain's creative choices are more arguable, for example, the hallucinogenic images of choruses of people singing back to her in public spaces. There is the ambiguous role of an interviewer (opaquely played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) with the same name as her prescription medication who forces her to confront her legacy. Some of the flashbacks signal more intriguing elements to her story like her rather inchoate relationship with Aristotle Onassis, her traumatizing encounters with Nazis when she was a child, and an intriguing conversation with JFK (played by Caspar Phillipson cast in the same, somewhat inconsequential role in "Jackie"). Her cloistered existence is leavened only by two devoted servants played poignantly by Pierfrancesco Favina and Alba Rohrwacher. Still Jolie's star power has a showcase befitting of her singular talent to convey hubris and vulnerability at almost the same time.

Pablo Larraín's film Maria attempts to portray the life of the famous opera singer Maria Callas, but it doesn't fully capture her strength and mystery. The film focuses mainly on the tragic aspects of her life, such as her difficult relationship with Onassis, the pressure of her career, and the pain caused by her fame. It is a film about sadness and suffering, but it misses the opportunity to highlight her immense talent and the beauty of her voice.

Nevertheless, the film does have its strengths. The cinematography is stunning, and Larraín's direction captures the heavy atmosphere of Callas' life well. The film subtly portrays the loneliness of her existence. The costumes and sets are beautiful and provide a visual tribute to the opera world in which Callas lived. The music is also well-chosen and creates some emotional moments that deepen the story.

One of the biggest issues with the film is the casting of Angelina Jolie in the lead role. She is a talented actress, but her appearance doesn't quite align with how Maria Callas looked. Callas had a very unique, but not "perfect" face-her face was full of emotion and vulnerability, which made her so human and real. Jolie's face often looks too polished, making it harder to see the true Maria Callas. Instead of Callas, the viewer mostly sees Angelina Jolie.

The film also lacks balance between showing Callas' sadness and celebrating her incredible musical talent. Callas' voice was one of the most beautiful in opera, and it's a shame that the film focuses so much on the difficult moments of her life. Yes, her life was filled with pain, but it would have been good to also show how magical her performances were, how technically skilled she was, and how much passion she put into every aria. A film about Callas should not only show her as a victim, but also as the great artist she was, who captivated the world again and again with her art.

If Maria Callas had seen this film, she might have felt uncomfortable. Instead of a film that celebrates her talent and voice, we get a somber portrait of her life, with little room for the beauty that defined her career. The film emphasizes her pain, rather than her most glorious moments. This is not what she deserved. Maria Callas deserves more than a film that focuses solely on her sorrow. She deserves a film that celebrates her as the legendary artist she was.

The surprise of this glum biopic is at the end credits that show the real Maria Callas. And she's smiling! She's laughing! She's even...gasp...having fun!! Amazing, since, with the exception of a scene toward the end where she's playing cards with her butler and cook, you can get old waiting for a light moment from this misery fest. And when director Pablo Lorrain isn't drowning you in doom (the film should have been titled "Death In Paris") scenarist Steven Knight is showering you with pretension in dialogue that is excessively florid even by the standards of folks who make their living in opera.

So once again we have a biopic of a creative near genius without the creativity or the genius. Just endless self pity and self destruction. If it were not for the considerable acting talents of Ms. Jolie this thing would be utterly unwatchable. Well, that's not really true. Cinematographer Ed Lachman's beautiful evocation of the city of light makes it eminently watchable. And the music, of course, is heart breakingly lovely. But then Lorraine and Knight have to go and muck things up again with their relentless rain cloud of a movie. Give it a C plus.

I agree with blanche-2 and other reviewers, as a former opera student for many years and opera lover and connoisseur.

This may be a delight for those who like Angelina Jolie and like to see a beatiful face on screen, but nothing here resembles the unique quality of divine Maria.

For starters, this is the worse lip-sync I have seen in my life in a biopic of a singer, and it was a surprise that a movie supposed to be a first-rate production went ahead ignoring this major failure. After all, singing is to the essence of the film, it is not a secondary scene. And if you want to recreate Callas life using real recordings, the performative effort must be flawless. Of course it is as hard as demanding, but if you want to compare Jolie's playback what a remarkable, well-executed example, please watch La Mome, the biopic about Edith Piaf, and find delight in Marion Cotillard's perfect, unbelievably good execution. (Jolie's lack of sync is as unbelievable.)

Then, the physique du role. Jolie is one of the most beautiful actresses of our time. But it has physical disparities with Callas which cannot be solved with make-up, and the lack of resemblance spoils the effort. Callas's beauty was tempered, life-chiseled, acquired, a result of a deep effort at self-awareness and self-hardening and reshaping her destiny. That kind of subjective process simply «showed» in her regal attitude, and imposing scenic presence. Jolie is a born beauty, her beauty a gift given from the start, and, in my opinion, she did not manage to convey the dramatic depth of Callas's appeal enough as to create the magical impression that we are seeing a credible Callas.

Also, for those who love opera, Jolie's embouchure (the singers' «mouth mould») is a joke, nothing close to the unmistaken bel canto mouth frame which opera singers (and Callas) distinctively employ. It may seem an unimportant detail, but the sum of inconsistencies and lack of attention to detail ends up being irritating.

I have not listed other observations already pointed by reviewers, which which I concur, related to the use of music score, plot and realism. I really wanted to like the movie, but it was a total disappointment to me.