Ten years have passed since Angelina Jolie left behind the magic of cinema with the famous character of Maleficent. She also left behind her divorce with Brad Pitt and now returns to the cinema, passing through the Venice and Toronto festivals to premiere two totally different productions in the same week: María y Without blood.
How different are the nerves of premiering at two festivals like Venice and Toronto, your work as an actress in María and the address of Without blood?
To be honest, all these years I needed to be at home with my family. And after all this time I feel grateful for the opportunity to be an artist. I feel lucky to be part of our creative world. I can only say that I am happy and grateful.
With the return to cinema much more serious than Maleficentthere is now also talk of a possible new Oscar nomination. Do you feel a certain pressure or does it fuel your passion to improve?
Honestly, for me, in my heart I’m just afraid of disappointing people who for example love Maria Callas so much, because I fell in love with her too. And I hope that my work was good enough not to disappoint fans and opera lovers with María and good cinema of Without blood.
Starring Salma Hayek, in Without blood Angelina Jolie is not only the director, she is also the screenwriter, although the story is based on the novel of the same name by the Italian Alessandro Baricco, about a girl named Nina, the only survivor of the horrific murder of her entire family.
And moving forward into the future, when Nina is already over 50 years old (with the performance of Salma Hayek) she meets again those responsible for changing her life forever. Precisely, the Mexican Demián Bichir is one of them.
And in the midst of the most violent scenes of the past, it is curious to see the exciting performances in the middle of a difficult conversation between the worst criminal and a victim, sitting at the same table, and reliving the worst moments, to hear another bell, that is, the other side of the story… Without blood.
How did you handle the other role of screenwriter in adapting the original book for the big screen? Were there any major changes in particular?
The first time I met the writer (Alessandro) Baricco, he told me that I was going to be forced to change the ending, that I was going to be forced to change the country and that I was going to be forced to change even the year in which the story takes place. But he also asked me to try to keep those aspects, because that was the intention with which he had written it.
Would you have changed it if I hadn’t asked you?
These are things that we sometimes change in an adaptation, out of a certain impulse to think that we have to explain something. And I think that is a universal commitment. The book is quite strong, but I focused much more on keeping alive what happened at the table (with Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir). We also filmed a lot, because I didn’t know how everything was going to turn out until Salma and Demián appeared with an extraordinary performance. Until the end, I didn’t know what I was going to leave… I was prepared to adapt in different ways.
At what point did you decide to choose Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir?
like the protagonists?
I thought of Salma (Hayek) very early on. I even called her and at first she rejected me (Laughs). It was a confusion, because she thought I was only going to produce and someone else was going to direct. And in the middle of that conversation I asked her if she could suggest someone else… and when she realized that I was going to be the director, somehow, I convinced her (Laughs).
And Demian?
We gave him the script to read. He had already worked with a monologue by the same author, with the same Twentieth century that Tim Roth filmed in The Legend of 1900I also liked a letter that Demián wrote to me, explaining what he felt as an actor and as a spectator. And we had a long conversation in which we agreed to work together.
How was the direction of the filming of the conversations between the two of them, at the table, amidst so many emotions and such long dialogues?
There is something that they probably didn’t realize, because, separately, I told them that they had to sit at the table with their own, defined point of view, so that in the conversation they could try to convince the other of what the characters had experienced. They also took their time, paid attention, and the next day they asked different questions. It changed. And it was a privilege to see them lead us in the cinema, with the story, so openly. Therefore, my job as director was only to guide them a little and the rest had to do with listening as much as I could.
What message would you like to convey with a war story in which, in the end, there is no bloodshed?
There are times when we break down in our lives, when something happens, something changes us with relationships and traumas, something happens. And we spend a lot of time in our lives trying to revisit that moment in one way or another. It affects us for the rest of our lives. And sometimes we don’t know how to sit down at a table to address that topic or that person with a conversation. I guess I’d like us all to be able to sit down and talk. And the idea is to start a conversation in which I don’t have the answer either. But seeing it in the cinema, maybe it will be understood that we don’t always know who is the bad guy or who is wrong. And the important thing is to sit down at the table and talk. It’s not easy to see them talking about a terrible murder, with a story that begins with violence and pain. It’s the most difficult table to sit down and interact at. And the most important thing is to know that in this life we have to understand each other, with everything that happens in the world, because it’s something we can’t achieve. I just hope that the idea of starting a conversation is accepted, even if it’s not easy.
From the other side of the camera, as the star of another blockbuster, Angelina Jolie, the actress, is also making her debut under the direction of Chilean director Pablo Larraín. A director famous for having brought to the big screen the life of Jackie Kennedy with Natalie Portman or Lady Di (Spencer) con Kristen Stewart.
This time he upped the ante by turning Angelina into opera singer Maria Callas, completing what he himself defines as a trilogy of female icons. In this film, the story takes place in Maria’s later years, in the 1970s, when she was living in Paris (although filming also took place in Milan and Budapest).
How easy was it to film the live performance, singing opera as
Maria Callas?
I was terribly nervous. I had been preparing for seven months. But I remember that the first time I had to sing I was very nervous. My children were with me and they helped me block the door so that no one else could come in. I was shaking. And Pablo (Larraín, the director) had the decency to start with me in a small hall, to end up at La Scala in Milan. He gave me time to grow, but it was terrifying. I had never sung in front of an audience before.
What was that seven-month preparation like?
I listened to it a lot. Maria Callas had given classes, so I was able to listen to many recordings of her classes. I was lucky, because I feel that she was the one who taught me, for example, to do what she calls a ‘straitjacket’, without thinking about what you feel or want. You have to try to understand the music and the composer’s intention, with a lot of discipline, practicing over and over again. And that’s what I did. Only later, at the end, do you have to get into the personal side, letting the emotions emerge and only when I was ready. It was something I had never done before. But I invite people to watch the film more than once, because they will realize that the lyrics speak much more about the moments of her life. I think she became these characters by allowing them to transform her.
What surprised you most about Maria Callas?
There is so much. What surprised me the most is the loneliness. It’s sad. I would love for her to be with us today to see the good side of her life, because when she passed away, the critics had not been so kind about her last experiences, at a time when she was not Maria either. She was older, she was not so well and I don’t know if she died knowing that she did the best she could and that we still love her, because I think that, precisely, she left the world with a lot of pain and loneliness.
To what extent did your love of music influence your children?
With the filming of María They’ve been listening to a lot of opera at home and they’ve become accustomed to it. And I hope that cinema will also bring opera to other people, that they’ll explore a world that they may not know about, that they’ll let it affect them, that they’ll be moved by it, because it’s a very powerful art form.
And in your case, what style of music did you like when you were the age of your little ones?
I liked punk rock more, for example, The Clash (authors of London Calling), but I always liked all kinds of genres. As I got older, I became more into classical music and opera. And the funny thing is that I still like the same music that I did when I was younger. I still listen to The Clash, but I think that when your life is already complete, after you have felt a certain level of pain or love to a certain degree, there are certain sounds that relate to those feelings as well. And for me, those emotions are encapsulated within the sound of opera. There is nothing that excites you as much. It is the only sound that can explain a pain.
Any favorite karaoke songs?
I’ve never actually sung before, so I haven’t tried karaoke either. Maybe now I’m ready to do karaoke with a favorite opera. I love Anna Bolena (to try).
And after having played a diva like Maria Callas, could you define the meaning of the word diva in a different way?
I think it is a word with negative connotations. I guess with Maria Callas I found a better meaning for the word diva and today I have a new relationship with her, a rather deep one that I hope I have channeled.
