MariaReview: Angelina Jolie Is Terrific (If Less Than Note-Perfect) as Tragic Diva Maria Callas

Mar. 15, 2025

Angelina Jolie in “Maria” (2024).Photo:Pablo Larrai­n

Pablo Larrai­n

There’s a story that soprano Maria Callas, secluded in her Paris apartment in the months before dying of a heart attack at 53, could be found paging sadly through her clippings. “Why didn’t they like me?” she asked.

Povera piccola!To borrow fromSally Field’s Oscars speech, theydidlike her, theyreallyliked her. “La Divina” was worshipped — revered — as both a celebrity and a performer, and in the nearly 50 years since her death she’s remained probably the most famous of any opera singer.

She had both an electric stage presence andan unforgettable voicethat, while not technically beautiful, projected a fierce, scalding intensity. You could sear a steak with that voice.

NowAngelina Jolie, reminding us that she’s not only a major star but a serious actress, plays the soon-to-expire Callas in this film from Pablo Larraín, a director known for his prickly yet poetic biopics of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis(Jackie,with Natalie Portman) and Princess Diana (Spencer,with Kristen Stewart).

This is a portrait of the artist as a living ghost, waiting to fade away and become the genuine, deceased thing.(For years there have been rumors, highly disputed and never proved, that she may have died of suicide.)

Angelina Jolie in ‘Maria’ (2024).Pablo Larraín/Netflix © 2024

Pablo Larraín/Netflix © 2024

Callas, bored and heart-broken in retirement, chokes down tranquilizers, laments her brokenaffair with Aristotle Onassis (who left her for Jackie) and occasionally meets with a piano accompanist, only to flee in despair at the sound of her irreparably frayed voice. She also shares memories during a sporadic interview with a journalist (Kodi Smit-McPhee). But he’s a phantom, a figment of her imagination, maybe death itself.

Callas with then-lover Aristotle Onassis in 1959.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty

Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty

This lack of authenticity may not matter to audiences who know ’s battle with Brad Pitt over a vineyardthan Callas’ feud with rivalRenata Tebaldi. (Callas described her own voice as champagne and Tebaldi’s as Coke.) ButMariaalso lacks depth as a study of an artist — it has the moth-like sadness of any story about a beautiful, bereft woman fluttering aimlessly around her rooms. But not much more.

Unlike Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana, women with shrewd political instincts and a determination to find and keep their place in the world, Callas had only her voice to offer the world. Without that, she was nothing.

And so, like a cat sensing that its lives have been used up, she retreated from view and died alone.

Mariais now on Netflix.

source: people.com