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Maria Movie Review

Maria is a 2024 biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larrain and starring Angelina Jolie. It’s a well made and performed, but thematically weaker film.

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“Book me a table at a café where the waiters know who I am.

I’m in the mood for adulation“

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Famed opera singer Maria Callas retreats to Paris in the 1970s after a glamorous yet tumultuous life in the public eye in this biopic that is the third in a trilogy of Larrain-directed movies about famous 20^th century women following ‘Jackie’ and ‘Spencer’. This is easily the weakest of the three movies due to its unwillingness to delve more deeply into Maria Callas’ life and motivations. We just get to witness her diva personality, but not much more than that.

Equating this woman to her opera persona and career was a double-edged sword. That was perhaps the point, especially as it tackled her complex relationship with her audience, which clearly mattered to her a lot. However, this approach led to her feeling less like a fully-developed person and more like an over-the-top diva in the vein of Norma Desmond. The movie felt a bit too eerily similar to ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in its central figure and her theatrical qualities.

I am not a fan of Angelina Jolie at all. I find her to be conceited and quite unlikable as a person and as an actress. But there is no denying that her work here is strong. Not only was she perfectly cast as this large persona given that Jolie herself is a famous tabloid person, but she also genuinely delivered both a very theatrical and a very moving performance. She even sang opera herself, which was quite admirable.

I did not quite care about any other people in this movie that is named Maria for a reason – it’s all about Callas and even her relationships with the people of her life are sidelined and underdeveloped. The dialogue, themes and overall plot are quite inferior in this movie that is all about its central heroine, actress and the visuals.

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Once again, a Pablo Larrain movie is competently directed, gorgeously shot and beautifully scored. I did feel that at times its loud, grandiose music made it feel a bit overwrought, but that larger than life approach to telling the story about one such person was ultimately the right choice for this narrative. I just wished that we really got to meet Callas, which is crucial for any biopic.