Starring Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted) in the leading role, Pablo Larraín’s latest biographical drama, Maria, explores the final days of legendary opera singer Maria Callas. The film continues Larraín’s focus on notable female historical figures, following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer.
Maria had its world premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival and went on to screen at other festivals including the 62nd New York Film Festival and the 60th Chicago Film Festival.
Release Date
Directed by Pablo Larraín, Maria opens in select US theaters on November 27, 2024, and on Netflix on December 11, 2024.
Synopsis
Academy Award–winner Angelina Jolie is Maria Callas, one of the most iconic performers of the 20th century in acclaimed director Larraín’s operatic Maria. The film follows the American-Greek soprano as she retreats to Paris after a glamorous and tumultuous life in the public eye. Maria reimagines the legendary soprano in her final days as the diva reckons with her identity and life.
“I’m making her pain personal to me, and that is certainly very private. It took many months of singing classes. Months of just getting the singing down and then the Italian classes and then the voice and doing all these things like her. You try to be precise,” says Jolie about her experience bringing Maria Callas to the screen in a Hollywood Reporter interview. “To exist and never have sung with your full body as loud as you could possibly sing — it’s something I think we should all feel. It’s scary, and it is rarely asked of us. It’s rarely asked of us in life to be all that we can be or feel all that we feel.”
Reviews
Hannah Strong in a Little White Lies review praised Jolie’s performance in the film, writing, “There’s an ethereal quality to Jolie’s performance that matches Callas’ legendary persona, and despite the deep sense of melancholy that pervades the film like a ghostly veil, this is still a love story – and one where the heroine lives forever.”
Clarisse Loughrey in an Independent (UK) review gave the film a score of 4/5, writing, “Larraín has a way to make what feels absurd on paper read as poignant on screen. Edward Lachman’s cinematography allows the transitions between reality and unreality, colour and black and white, to melt into one beautiful, sad dream.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Maria.
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