Turns out once was not enough for the cinematic tale of Maria Callas’ last week, as told by Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín and interpreted with courage and beauty by Hollywood icon Angelina Jolie.
I don’t remember the day, or the weather — though I imagine it was sweltering outside on the Lido — when I first watched Pablo Larraín’s Maria in Venice. It was hot every day this year and only once I had finally left the Venice Film Festival did the rains come, clearing away the mosquitoes and the unbearable heat.
I also don’t remember when I disconnected with the film, but a dear friend, who also first watched the film in Venice and rewatched it in London, told me she thinks she may have dozed off during it. This is not due by any means to the wondrous film making, rather because film festivals are slowly becoming obsolete as means to promote a film to the critics and industry insiders. The programming is schizophrenic at best and watching four to five films a day is downright criminal. Nothing gets the attention and love it deserves and what is the point anyway? To say you’ve watched it first? It’s better to watch it later, and well.
Watching a film for me is a religious experience, or rather becomes so once I’ve left the festivals’ grounds and am able to connect to each individual work in the coziness of a small cinema, with a real audience. People who let their feelings out are what I mean by real audiences, not film critics and journalists who have become so jaded they can’t even let out a laugh. Or a tear.
This year’s BFI London Film Festival has been an exceptional means for me to watch films, because I allowed myself to do so as an awards voter, not just a film journalist.
So, when a publicist sent me the trailer for Pablo Larrain’s Maria, I realized I needed to revisit the film, because I knew I would love it, if only I could watch it with the right audience. And that viewing did happen, inside the Ham Yard Hotel in London, surrounded by industry insiders and craftmen and women involved in the cinema world. Plus a couple of rogue Golden Globes voting members like yours truly.
Between my initial viewing on the Lido and now, I also caught a documentary on Maria Callas, which helped me to find my own personal connection with the Greek Diva and realize there were a few stereotypes that I needed to do away with, before settling back into Larraín’s magic.
With both Spencer and Jackie, the Chilean director had taken us on a ride through specific moments in the private lives of very public women. Jackie brings me to tears, each time I watch it, and always in the same spot. I still can’t figure out how a Chilean man who doesn’t live in the US has gotten that nostalgia for a specific time in American history so well painted. But also what it must have felt to be a woman like Jackie O. once JFK was gone. Later, Spencer made me realize that Princess Diana had a private energy that was much more fascinating than her public persona. In each film, music, the beauty of the surroundings, the exquisite acting and stunning clothes have taken me on a journey from which I never want to return.
Maria, though, has changed my life.
I do say this about certain films and I always mean it. Just like a lot of us have a favorite piece of music which brings us to tears every time we hear it (mine also happens to be featured in Maria, so I won’t get into how those warm tears slid down my face when I watched the film again) I have favorite films, that burrow deep in my heart, and soul. And when I need to feel, or better yet feel differently about the world, I revisit them. Maria is my new go-to film, because the story of the last seven days of La Callas’ life, when she finally became her own woman, to tragic consequences, feels like a personal dharma. Remember to be true to yourself, before it’s too late, it seems to speak to me.
So what makes Maria so perfect? For one, it’s Angelina Jolie herself, who captured the essence of the Greek Diva because, I dare speculate, the star has found the parallel with her own life. A special moment towards the end of the film, when a French music journalist approaches Callas to confront her with her fading talent felt so deeply paparazzo-like that I experienced an overflowing sense of shame for my profession — always ready to bombard Jolie, the woman, the actress, the celebrity with personal questions. As I had a chance to chat with the actress in person, after the film — and yes, she is more beautiful in person, if that’s even possible! — she revealed her vulnerability but also channeled Callas, in a personal moment we shared that I will never reveal. Because those instances in her company are more precious to me than any exclusive.
Left to right, Larraín and Jolie with Alba Rohrwacher and Guy Hendrix Dyas, photo © E. Nina Rothe
Larraín was his own kind of wonderful to speak to. As a colleague and I started to chat with the intense director, whose eyes seem to read right through you, a group of three middle aged women approached him, waving their arms about and exalting the beauty of the film. Forgetting my colleague and I were even in the same room, the leader of the ladies’ group talked straight into the filmmaker’s face and finally, after accepting her repeated praise, he posed a question back to her. One which, as the fly on the wall I’d turned into in that moment, made me want to watch the film yet again. Because, and here’s where I tell you I won’t disclose his question either, at the risk of giving away the ending of the film, that tiny question he asked opened up an extra dimension to the film’s secret. Let’s just say it has to do with Callas’ imagination, as a scene of Turandot in the rain does too. When I caught up with the film’s extraordinary production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas (he also worked on Spencer) after the screening, he pointed out that Callas never sang in the opera by Giacomo Puccini, thus making the scene an even more fantastical moment in the film.
To Larraín, the story of Maria Callas is one close to his heart, he admitted during the post-screening Q&A. “I grew up as someone who was lucky enough to go very often to the opera, thanks to my mom,” the filmmaker confessed. After failing to become a musician, he found a camera, and “so here I am!” he said, proudly. Making Maria was a way to put both passions of his together. The filmmaker called the film a “full-on melodrama,” but also conceded it’s a tragedy. Opera is a melodrama, one could argue, as with most roles that Callas played during her life, she died on stage. But Larraín also called the film a “celebration” of all the Diva was and dismissed critics who called him “too reverential” to her image, in the film, admitting instead that she still holds mysteries as a woman, even after he has made a film about her.
One thing which made me completely fall in love with the interpretation of Callas by Jolie, is that the Los Angeles-born actress learned to sing for the role. And I mean, SING, not like we all do to pop songs in the shower, but operatic singing, which Larraín confirmed was a whole other level of impossible.
“At first I though, I’ll approach this intellectually, I’ll learn about opera,” Jolie admitted, “and then a few weeks in, after a few singing classes I realized this was very serious, he [Larraín] was very serious about this,” continuing that even though she’s always serious about her work, this was a whole new world for her. “It’s art that requires all of you — every last muscle in your body, every last breath and the loudest, biggest you can possibly be.” Jolie called it “a gift.”
What is a gift, to us watching it, is Maria, with the nuanced, touching supporting performances by Alba Rohrwacher as Callas’ cook Bruna and Pierfrancesco Favino as the butler Ferruccio. But also — a bit of a spoiler alert here — Kodi Smit-McPhee as Mandrax, a figment of the Diva’s imagination, a kind journalist there to interview her and named after her favorite quaalude. Costumes, inspired by Callas’ love for Yves Saint Laurent, are by Massimo Cantini Parrini, and the music, well, that’s courtesy of Callas, composed by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and co.. And mixed, from 3 percent to 90 percent, with Jolie’s voice — and that comes straight from Larraín’s mouth. To your ears.
If I can add one small discordant note to it all, the film lacks Sebastián Sepúlveda’s brilliant editing, which has helped past Larraín films become outstanding masterpieces. One hopes that whatever reason the two have had to be apart for the last couple of projects by the Chilean auteur, have been resolved and they can work together again, for the good of great cinema!
Maria will be distributed by Netflix in the US, starting on November 27th in theaters, and in the UK it will be in cinemas starting January 10th, thanks to StudioCanal.
Images used with permission.