PABLO LARRAÍN — MARIA

Doctors often label revelation as an illness, when, in fact, it is an act of sanity. — La Callas, in MARIA

“Revelation,” then, as it relates to hallucination as it relates to illusion… as it relates to cinema. Pablo Larraín’s MARIA finds the soprano Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) in the last week of her life, stalking her grand Paris apartment, dressed to the nines, humoring her butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housemaid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), hoarding and abusing downers (Mandrax in pill form and played by Kodi Smit-McPhee in human form). Haunted by her final public performance three years prior—a 1974 concert in Japan, where her ankles and everything else (“except my ego”) swelled—she sets up a series of impromptu private rehearsals with a local pianist. Not with the intention of staging a return, but just to sing. For herself. After all, at this point in her life, the world is acting for her. Walking through Trocadéro on her way to the rehearsal hall, she sees a crowd of people choreographed in plein air performance. Claiming she dislikes listening to her own records, she has no problem playing back the mental tapes of a very rich life, reeling through the years of wartime nightmares, Onassis interludes, JFK walk-ons, and her unparalleled triumphs on the stage as one of the greatest opera singers of the twentieth century.

To be a prima donna requires two things: a superlative singing voice and, per James McCourt, the ability to “do diva.” A diva—a persona sustained by the interpretation of its actions through the camp amplifications of its followers—must both embody the tragic parts she plays and survive them. MARIA has been called the third film of Larraín’s “Diva Trilogy”—high-gloss imaginings of the private tribulations of such icons of fascination as Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie) and Princess Diana (Spencer). With this trilogy, the filmmaker can be said to carry forward a certain line of goddess worship practiced by Von Sternberg, Cukor, Visconti, Sirk, Fassbinder, and others—beautiful indulgences of nostalgic reverie and trauma in an increasingly vapid world.

MARIA’s emotional crescendo comes, as it must, with the performance of the aria from Puccini’s Tosca that, in translation, begins, I lived for my art / I lived for love / I never did harm to a living soul! / With a secret hand / I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of / Always with true faith, my prayer rose to the holy shrines… Echoing Betrand Bonello’s 2014 film Saint Laurent—which also peaks with a Callas recording of this aria, playing over the presentation of the designer’s 1976 “Opera and Ballet Russes” collection—Larraín directs Jolie to walk into a salon in a slow motion défilé, with orchestra members arrayed on either side of an imaginary runway. As a character study, the film might be a bit more “warts and all” than its predecessors. But in the end, la Callas remains a much more substantial figure than either Jackie or Diana, and—as explicated by Steven Knight’s terse, witty, poetic screenplay and Jolie’s remarkable performance—she always gets the last word. As such, MARIA is a complement to its subject’s art form and the exquisite state of rapture it demands.

Now playing at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, which has also programmed an accompanying Larraín retrospective—including screenings of Tony Manero, Post Mortem, Jackie, Spencer, No, The Club, Neruda, Ema, and El Conde. The director will appear for selected Q & A’s. See info and links below.