Angelina Jolie calls the film Maria, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this Thursday, the most challenging role of her career. In it, the 49-year-old Oscar winner plays the Greek soprano Maria Callas, one of the greatest opera stars of all time. The American girl learned opera singing because of it.
The film, which will be released by Netflix at the end of the year, was shot by Chilean director Pablo Larraín. It captures the last days of the Greek diva’s life before she died in Paris in 1977. By then, Maria Callas had developed an addiction to anti-anxiety medication. She spent most of her time with a maid and a servant, a cook and a driver in one person. In the film, she recapitulates her ups and downs from the time when the world was at her feet.
“This was my most difficult, most demanding role,” says Angelina Jolie. “I felt like I was on another planet. I went so far beyond what I consider to be my comfort zone in my personal life and in art,” the actress recalls of the scenes that the crew filmed in, among other places, the famous Milanese opera La Scala .
Angelina Jolie has acted in more than sixty films, from action thrillers to emotional dramas. She won the Oscar in 1999 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama Disruption.
She told Pablo Larraín, the director of the current film, that she could sing, but then she realized that she would have to take her technique to another level because of Maria Callas. In the end, she practiced opera singing for several months. “I thought it would be enough to sing the way people normally sing in movies, when you either pretend to sing or sing just a little. But it was clear from the beginning that it wouldn’t be enough, because you can’t fake opera singing,” she explains.
In Venice, Pablo Larraín calculated that in about 95 percent of the scenes where Maria Callas is heard on screen, he used actual recordings of the Greek soprano from her most famous period. In the remaining sequences from the end of life, he let Angelina Jolie’s voice be heard directly.
Actress Angelina Jolie and director Pablo Larraín. | Photo: Reuters
“She really trained a lot and quite amazingly for it, she sang from morning to night. It touched us a lot, we even cried during the filming,” mentions actress Alba Rohrwacher, who played the maid.
Forty-eight-year-old director Pablo Larraín often listened to opera while growing up in Chile. With the film, according to his words, he wants to once again remind the wider public of an art form that, after all, has lost some of its luster since 1977, when Maria Callas died at the age of only 53. “I hope that this film will stimulate interest in opera, whether it touches five people or maybe a million,” he announces.
In recent years, the director drew attention to himself with live biographies of former American first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and British Princess Diana, both strong women who made history. The first Maria Callas is connected to the Greek shipowner and billionaire Aristotle Onassis, who had a relationship with both women. First, he had an affair with a Greek soprano for years, after which he left her and married Jacqueline Kennedy in 1968.
In the film, Maria Callas keeps hoping that Onassis’ ghost will visit her. The businessman died two years earlier, in March 1975. “I understand why she felt vulnerable,” notes Angelina Jolie, who is currently divorcing actor Brad Pitt herself. He will also come to the Venice festival, but he will bring his new film only on Sunday, so that the former spouses do not meet.
Maria is one of 21 films competing for the top prize of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The winner will be announced next Saturday, September 7.
Early reviews are cautious. While, according to the British BBC, in the films about Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana, the director clearly knew what he wanted to say, in the news about the story of the opera singer, he strangely oversteps. The film begins with her death, shows how Maria Callas forces her servants to constantly move the piano from one room to another, how she walks around Paris or gives an interview to a television crew in her imagination.
The film mostly deals with her relationship with Onassis. “But Maria Callas was acclaimed and talented in her own right, so it’s a bit insulting that the film spends more time on who she loved than on her dizzying successes and stunning conflicts. The scenes with Onassis are more soap opera than opera.” evaluates the British BBC, which awarded the film three out of five stars.
Server Variety.com appreciatesthat arias from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, Gioacchino Rossini or Giacomo Puccini sound every now and then. “The filmmakers did a great job lip-syncing Angelina Jolie and the original recordings,” he mentions.
According to him, the very story about the opera singer who was betrayed by her voice is already weaker. “While Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana had to face dizzying circumstances, the film about Maria Callas is driven only by her dramatic fatalism. It doesn’t do the protagonist much good,” the critic thinks. “At one point, Maria Callas remarks that opera singing is so demanding that it drains all the life out of a person. It’s a wonderful idea, but it seems to drain all the life out of the film as well,” the magazine states. He nevertheless no doubtthat thanks to a memorable performance, Angelina Jolie will have another chance to receive an Oscar nomination after many years.
Video: Sample from the movie Maria
A sample from the film Maria with Angelina Jolie, which will be released this year by Netflix. | Video: The Upcoming
