Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.
Angelina Jolie delivers a commanding, deeply committed performance as Maria Callas, anchoring the film with raw emotional intensity. Pablo Larraín's direction brings his signature dreamlike, surrealist visual language to the period setting, resulting in lush and distinctive cinematography that elevates the material. The plot, however, is somewhat elliptical and meandering—Larraín's fragmented approach to biography works better here than in some cases but still leaves the narrative feeling loose and underdeveloped in places. Novelty sits in the middle: Larraín's biopic trilogy approach (Jackie, Spencer, Maria) is now an established mode rather than a fresh one, though the Callas subject matter and operatic integration give it some distinctiveness. The ending, while poignant, is inevitable given the subject and doesn't fully transcend the expected elegiac close of a musician biopic.