PREMISE
Maria Callas, the world’s greatest opera singer, spends the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, confronting her identity and life.
THE GOOD STUFF
ANGIE F****** JOLIE– No, she doesn’t look anything like Maria Callas. Like, at all. Not a bit. Yes, that is her singing. Even though her voice is blended with Maria’s throughout the film, she’s giving it a go. And she can sing. It’s evident that the high notes are all Callas, and it may be slightly apparent that the acapella stuff sung on the fly is mostly her (she did sing in front of a large audience in a scene that depicts the Anna Bolena performance at La Scala in Milan). That’s important to note because the singing (even though it is blended) combined with all of the heavy lifting that she does in a lot of these super duper heavy moments in this film, makes this a justifiable lock for an Oscar nomination and quite possibly a lock for the award itself. This is a top-five performance from her, no question. She is amazing in this movie in many different ways.
CINEMATOGRAPHY– Maria is one of those movies that makes it a point to have every single shot look like it could be a screensaver. There are absolutely breathtaking shots of Paris, Milan, and multiple Opera houses that are just absurdly stunning. Multiple musical numbers sung straight into the camera are stunning, as well.
There are certain movies that use cinematography to create the world surrounding the characters, and then there are other films that use cinematography to convince you that the exotic locales they’re filming in are really amazingly idyllic. Maria is one of those films.
THE BAD STUFF
EVERYONE ELSE– I’m not saying that anybody is bad in their performances in this movie, but this is intended to be a one-woman show. Every supporting character that comes along doesn’t get their big scene(s) to chew on, and it makes things frustrating to watch. Maria Callas clearly had people in her corner who cared about the person more than they cared about being close to that kind of fame. However, those people are treated in this movie like ancillary pieces to her story that don’t matter when they matter a lot. Kodi Smit-McPhee, Haluk Bilginer, Alba Rohrwacher, and Pierfrancesco Favino are all doing their best with what they are given, but they are not given much.
The most distinctive sign of a good biopic is how well they utilize the people surrounding the character, who is the point of focus. When that’s done badly, it hurts the entire film….as it does here.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE PACING– I would have to sit down and think of a biopic that moved as glacially slow as this. This roughly 130-minute film feels like a solid 3 hours. Throughout the running of the film, we are narratively volleyballed to these interesting but very slow-moving points of Maria’s life (her childhood, her abusive marriage) that all deserve a lot more screen time given their importance to explain why Maria is so miserable with herself at the time that we meet her given all of that she’s accomplished.
THE STRUCTURE– At first, it seems like the journey of the movie is Maria trying to gear up for one final concert to prove to herself that she can hit the notes that she used to hit and perform with the same fervor that she used to perform with. The film spends a good amount of time on that before Maria starts having hallucinations. And then we have all of these random hallucinating scenes that take up a lot of time when they didn’t need to be there in the first place.
This, along with the aforementioned lengthy flashbacks, derails the momentum of the movie. At the end of the day, Maria is a collection of really nice scenes mixed with mediocre ones with very little structure to truly bind them.
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Jolie is in her bag on this one. This is an EPIC AS F*** performance. If you are a fan of hers, run to see this and do not walk. However, even if you are a fan of hers, you will find this movie less entertaining than what Oscar movies of this particular type tend to be.
Maria is the lesser of the recent musical Netflix biopics (tick tick boom, maestro) even though it’s by far the technically superior film in every way… every way other than the story. This movie is a feast for the eyes and the ears, but the story and characters are the most important things at all times, folks. Without that, it’s all empty calories.
MARIA is in select theaters now, and will premiere on Netflix on December 11th
