Maria (2024)

Maria-(2024)
Maria (2024)

On September 16, 1977, the American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas died at the beginning of “Maria,” Pablo Larrain’s drama. At the time, she was as thin as a ghost dressed in a thin white nightgown lying on the floor of her magnificent Parisian living room. The story goes back one week in time, most of the story is rather recollecting that seven-day period (although it is supplemented with significant moments in Callas’s life). So you can say, we are not left in any doubt about where this is leading. However, we are not left in doubt of where exactly it is going because the entire week took place in the last fateful week of Maria’s life. Rather we know it because the narrative that ‘Maria’ seeks to portray is of a neurotic descent into death.

The apartment, decorated with chandeliers spilling down from the high ceilings, has wooden walls and stretched ancient paintings, and, to add the icing on the cake, it has the most expensive bed I believe I have ever seen in a film is sufficient to indicate the 18th French King court. This is Larraín’s third in a row respective of an inside portrait of an outstanding woman of the century, the first made in ‘Jackie’ about Jacqueline Kennedy and the second one in ‘Spencer’ about Princess Diana. In all these three, the residences appear to be well-designed and are completely appropriate to their role, being a visualization of a grand theater as outlined in a gilded cage. Jackie Kennedy, naturally, lived in the White House. “Spencer,” too, was set at Queen Elizabeth’s house in the country. But even if Maria Callas living in the film is presented as a wealthy woman, it is her apartment, much more than the others’ houses in the other films, that makes her feel like she is in a self-created cell.

It’s possible that this is due to the fact that her life has turned into a living hell. Maria survives each day with the help of her ‘medicine’ which consists of Nandrolone Cyproterone and Mandrax, the latter of which she uses illegally as a hypnotic sedative. Her food intake is quite low; it is revealed that she may go three to four days without eating food, an eating disorder that stemmed from her desire to be thinner than the so-called ‘fat’ girl in her childhood. Everything about Maria is obsessive. She treats two of the people who have looked after her day in and day out, her housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and her butler and chauffeur Feruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) like serfs, their sole aim in life is to indulge her fantasies. (She keeps instructing him to reposition the grand piano several times even without reason, despite Ferruccio being a nice man with a bad back.) She makes an effort to completely avoid her doctor as if he’s a demon. Night after night, she imagines that she’s being haunted by the spirit of her dead lover Aristotle Onassis.

Then there’s the issue of her vocalization. She is 53 years old and hasn’t been on stage for over four and a half years. However, the way the camera shows her, she is an artist in every sense of the word, and above all is a woman whose gift, is, to sing an opera with a stunningly beautiful and angelic voice that has no equal, and is beautiful and so powerful that it pierces the night sky, and strives to touch the heavens. Loaded with opera, “Maria” features numerous cells from Italian masters of the 19th century (Verdi, Rossini, Puccini), that Callas spreads through the repertoire. When an aria sounds on the soundtrack, we remember that Callas possessed such a gift. Jolie lipsyncs convincingly and matches the smallest details of Callas’s voice. We can easily sense how the singing frustrates Maria, for she can’t stand listening to her old records, she claims they sound too perfect and it causes her to be uncomfortable. “People want a miracle,” she says, resigned to her unfortunate reality. “Miracles can be performed no more.” However, distancing from the vocal training, she is hardly done with the singing. Now, it is significantly smaller. She calls Ashfield, a vocal tutor, who also doubles as her accompanist, and tells him about her struggle, “This is her opera Maria. I wish to hear La Callas!”

What’s the point in living if La Callas can’t be resuscitated? That is, one might argue, as tragic a tale as that of opera: a remarkable forte becoming limited by the eponymous’s decay. However, one could also argue that It makes Maria Callas in ‘Maria’ less of an epic heroine who seeks to achieve something concrete and instead, languishes away like Norma Desmond of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ who is a lost legend. Of course, she could struggle, but she would only gain superiority in suffering for adventures she wouldn’t ever find worthwhile.

However, such was not the case with the main characters of ‘Jackie’ and ‘Spencer’ who, whilst going through their own, at the very least, unbearable turmoil, were remarkably unlike that. “Jackie” sought to illustrate the week immediately after JFK’s assassination, and how all hope and courage for Jackie Kennedy was hinged on the knowledge that such a week would be historically significant “In doing so, she almost becomes a feminist icon.” “Spencer” is concerned about how Diana came to terms with the fact that her marriage was arranged and indeed not one of love and embraced the dread of it, deciding to revolutionize the paradigm of what the modern monarchy looked like. Both films were focused on a certain theme of a grim kind of victory.”

Larrain’s movie, “Maria,” draws upon his extensive ability to tell stories filmically as well as his fierce sense of empathy. However, this is a time when the movie was made in lack of a dramatic focus which would have perhaps helped it a lot. It is probably the first of these three films, where the central character is a very famous figure, however, Maria somehow is not as appealing as the lead ladies in “Jackie” or “Spencer” and one cannot help but think that it is for lack of importance as well.

With regards to production work, and screen time, we understand the contours of Jolie’s character quite well. The character of Maria starts to morph from the instant that she steps on screen through her scheming to portray the goddess diva as an enigmatic figure, balancing the life essence of a creative force and emotion-filled femme fatale. It has been a while since one could see the depth of a serious actor showing through Jolie, which was much appreciated. But possibly JÂrrain and his screenwriter Steven Knight, known for “Spencer” and “Locke” as well, could have contributed more balance by exposing the more vulnerable side of Maria in the end.

In Edward Lachman’s shots, “Maria” features beautiful and seductive warmth typical of fall. The sequences of Maria’s memories are shown in black-and-white. They change the context of Maria’s backstory but are still rather vague. It’s the same in her chats with a fan film director named Mandrax, who appears weirdly enthusiastic about his work and is played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. There are also scenes from World War II in which Maria, a young girl at the time, is told to sing for the German troops and is later filmed having sex with them. These depict her strained bond with her mother.

There, however, her delusions of grandeur have to be rudely interrupted. At that point in her life, the key players and events that define her are still in the future. But those confounding roadblocks have everything to do with Onassis, the stuff of legends. He appears here as a powerful businessman who has an outrageous ego. Haluk Bilginer makes him startling through odd bravado. She continues to become enthralled with the man, but she does not submit herself to his will entirely. As a result, the two are never wed. (If anything, Onassis disassociated from Callas and married Jackie Kennedy, something the film barely touches upon outside of bringing in JFK as a character.)

At some point, Maria notices that singing opera the way she does is an exhausting process that drains everything out of you. In a way, that is an impressive idea but by the end of ‘Maria’ it feels somewhat that it is that idea that has taken all the fun out of the film.

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