PERSPECTIVE — The first things operagoers want to know about the the new Maria Callas biopic — simply titled Maria — are if it’s reasonably authentic and if La Divina is responsibly characterized. Oh, and is it good? Answers to all three are yes. B-plus or so. In the haphazard history of opera-related movies, Callasologists can’t expect some factual documentary, and they can be grateful that Angelina Jolie’s Oscar-baiting portrayal will assure that the movie will be seen. Remember the 2002 Callas Forever film that had the ideal actress to play Callas in Fanny Ardant? Even she couldn’t save that superficial, fictionalized Franco Zeffirelli movie from the obscurity it deserved. After that, Maria starts looking even better in comparison.
This new Pablo Larraín-directed film has Callas in forced retirement, having given up opera in 1965 at age 41 amid an alarming vocal deterioration. Her final days in 1977 — she died that year on Sept. 17 at 53 — are a frame for flashbacks to key points in her life, allowing Jolie to assume many of Callas’ iconic images, such as the famous Audrey Hepburn-meets-Medea photo that’s a study in intense reds and blues. Much of this will mean the most to those already familiar with her story and the 1950s opera world that saw her at her peak. Flashbacks also go as far back as the Manhattan-born soprano’s girlhood in Greece, where her mother courted Nazi generals who might have a taste for her daughter.
The diva-in-autumn scenes in 1977 Paris have a fly-on-the-wall quality that can be a tad slow and brooding. One odd leitmotif is Callas asking to have her piano moved from room to room, which acts as a structural interlude between sections of the film. (And if the doors don’t seem wide enough for a grand piano, a slimmed-down instrument was built for those scenes.) A handful of arias are heard, taken from her recordings and convincingly lip-synced by Jolie, who delivers bull’s-eye line readings with great subtlety. She carries herself with a law-unto-herself graviatas. As with his Princess Diana biopic Spencer, Larraín deftly goes into fantasy with an understated tone allowing fluid transitions between what is happening out there in the world and what’s in Callas’ head. While taking a stroll in Paris, she sees a group of tourists morphing into opera choristers singing the “Anvil Chorus” from Il trovatore. The surrealism hardly stops there.
The Steven Knight script initially seems to veer between functional and disarming — functional with the well-worn narrative conceit of telling Callas’ story in the context of a journalistic interview and disarming in elegant insights that could only come from someone who has lived on top of the world. Wearing white gloves and a red uniform, her butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) tells her with unsympathetic plainness that she is abusing her medication. He is like a parent who has learned to live with the imperious walls Callas has built around herself. But they’re not fooling each other for a minute.
When she alerts him to the arrival of a camera crew, he quietly asks, “Is it real?” Maybe. Callas would not be the first or last aging diva whose pretensions turn into delusions. The journalist (Kodi Smit-McPhee) arrives with minimal equipment. Named Mandrax (which was also an addictive 1970s sedative that Callas was known to use), he appears here and there, asks softball questions, listens eagerly to her pronouncements (which can be a bit empty), tells her what she wants to hear, and, in a potentially cliched moment, confesses that he is falling in love with her. Callas’ nonchalantly reply: “It happens a lot.” Is he the angel of death? This isn’t a spoiler but a debatable heads-up.
Aristotle Onassis (Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer) is a significant presence, often in flashbacks to Maria’s prime — and shot in black and white. He wins her because he’s above any rules or codes of discretion and goes on to be her ultimate heartbreak. But it’s when she visits him on his deathbed that the film’s writing becomes Oscar-worthy: Their exchange is calm and direct. No filters, no heartache, no manipulation, no apologies. The message is: We did what we did, we were who we were.
One sad truth to come out of the film is how Callas’ vocal demise was seen as her fault: In one scene, a fan approaches her in a cafe and reminds her how she broke his heart by canceling a performance. (You also saw it in real life when Callas was interviewed by Barbara Walters.) Near the end of Maria, she takes on the mad scene from Anna Bolena, which seemed to be a setup for failure. In real life, Callas had reason to hope that she could retrieve her voice. Private recordings made 18 months before her death showed that on some days it was 70 percent back. But nobody, not even she, knew when those days would be. And in this scene, the voice seemed half awake at best. The young Callas often appeared to achieve brilliance through sheer willpower. But after 15 years on the world’s stages, that wasn’t enough.
Many elements of the Callas personality are bypassed by the film. Never do you see the Callas who, in unguarded moments, spoke in an American accent that sounded like a Greek waitress. Or made sure her Juilliard School master classes were over in time for her to watch I Love Lucy. In her late-in-the-film confrontation with a tabloid journalist, I would have loved Jolie to have had a valedictory speech about the mystery and tragedy of vocal loss.
I would also love to have seen more of the Callas described to me by Jeffrey Tate, who was a répétiteur in his pre-conducting days and worked with her extensively near the end of her life. She could be quite animated in her Paris apartment wearing a house coat with a stop watch around her neck to keep track of when she was to take her medication, as per doctor’s orders. She wasn’t as wedded to her old repertoire as she might have seemed. With Tate, she worked on Italian songs by Bellini. There are said to be private, low-fi recordings of her trying her hand at Schumann lieder. Somehow, it feels unseemly to feel sorry for Callas in ways prompted by the film. Ah well. Dramatic license is expected. No Callas fan will ever be 100 percent happy with a La Divina portrayal. Maria may be the best we could hope for.
