Maria review: Angelina Jolie brings pain and beauty to a soprano’s journey of self destruction

Pablo Larraín’s Maria is a complex story about a troubled diva that keeps you hooked in parts. Here’s why!

After Jackie on Jackie Kennedy and Spencer on Princess Diana, Pablo Larraín completes his trilogy on enigmatic women with Maria. Based on the famous Greek-American soprano Maria Callas, the film is set in Paris 1977 when the opera singer was battling her last few years. Making her comeback with this film is none other than Angelina Jolie who gets into the skin of the character and becomes one with it. This isn’t like the other biopics where we see someone rise to fame and feel all motivated, this one portrays the decline and downfall of a layered celebrity. 

The film starts with a frame of Jolie lip syncing to actual recordings of Maria Callas and then shifts to a slow morning in her big house. As it unfolds further, you start noticing her erratic behavior and how she is descending into madness. Her house staff in particular - Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and Ferrucio (Pierfrancesco Favino) are gore witnesses to her decline as a star. Maria struggles with drug addiction and she goes feral without her pills. She also often gets hallucinations because of it and pretends to be interviewed by a reporter who is in love with her. But her main battle isn’t even with the drugs, it’s with her voice. She knows she isn’t as good as she once was because her voice is slowly starting to deteriorate. She loses confidence to perform live on stage but misses the fame that came along with it. She demanded yet resented fan recognition in public places because she was layered like that. 

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Interestingly, Maria Callas’ journey reminded me a lot of Marlyn Monroe’s. They were both celebrated women who struggled with drug issues and paved their own way to downfall. Not just that, both of these women had a rather complicated love life. Be it Monroe’s affair with JFK or Maria’s toxic husband, both of them longed for love that they knew they were never going to get. Maria and Blonde (2022) have a similar slow burning vibe that brings out the pain these two women went through. When we are also taken back to Maria’s tough childhood in Nazi occupied Greece, a lot of who she eventually becomes starts to make sense. She’s had an entire lifetime of people she thought she could put her faith in disappointing her in unfathomable ways. She lives with the trauma of that and so much more.

Angelina Jolie plays this character with so much nuance and gets into the psyche of all her delusions, depression and the discrepancies in her voice. There’s no denying that she looks beyond gorgeous on-screen but in Maria’s weakest moments she highlights that fact that she is just a woman who is in denial about the fact that she needs help. Maria isn’t a redemption story, it’s a prime example of how loneliness can lead someone to a path of self destruction.

Maria is currently streaming on Lionsgate Play!

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