Miserable, lonely, washed-up Callas has no friends. Her electrifying career is old news. The film is about: “Did you call your doctor?” and “Move the piano.” The renowned diva is clinically depressed. Her history as a dumped woman is her legacy. Jolie unwisely trusted her director.
The last week in everyone’s life has an inevitable sad ending. What was the last week in Beethoven’s life, Leonardo da Vinci’s life, Jim Morrison’s life, like?
“All Greek men beat their women. He who loves well beats well.” - Aristotle Onassis Maria
Maria Callas’s (Angelina Jolie) last days, as presented by screenwriter Steven Wright and director Pablo Larrain, is an exercise in bringing the world-famous opera singer to heel as a lonely, friendless, drug-addicted psychological mess. I could not believe that this genius had fallen into such a desperate, empty existence. Callas had a magnificent Paris apartment, a vast collection of jewels, furs and gowns and was a controversial, highly sought after global phenomenon for decades.
Callas only had two long-time employees: her butler/chauffeur Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher). Could MARIA be a truthful rendering of the heralded career of Callas? Here Callas is shown several times wandering alone through Paris streets. No one calls her. No one cares about her.
Twelve men walked on the Moon. How many opera singers have reached the stature of Maria Callas?
So, I rushed to read Cast a Diva: The Hidden Life of Maria Callas by Lyndsy Spence. Cast a Diva shows Aristotle Onassis to be an evil, violent abuser and openly a sadist. Callas’s husband is a vicious monster. Callas’s mother and sister hated her.
With this cast of real-life characters, Wright and Larrain chose to depict Callas as a vessel of hopelessness struggling to accept the loss of her voice. She cannot reach the demanding high notes the audience expected. Audiences booed her.
Onassis constantly humiliated Callas, who grew up as “ugly, fat, and clumsy.” He tormented her and then, when her fame declined, married a far more famous trophy woman. His trophy wife spent $20 million dollars the first year of their marriage. Onassis paid for Callas’s apartment and its upkeep, but she constantly said she had to work to survive financially.
Larrain spends must of the time more fascinated with the opulent sets then his star. Jolie trusted Larrain implicitly, allowing her placement in scenes far in the distance. In theater scenes, she is a speck on stage. She walks around a lot. She spends most of her time telling Ferruccio to move a piano and is constantly asked by the butler and housekeeper, “Did you call your doctor?”
What prevented Wright and Larrain from depicting the horrific relationship between Callas and her husband and the cruelty she suffered under Onassis? Her relationship with Onassis was deplorable and would have been the story that needed to be told. Author Spence details the family took a vast amount of money from her. This should have been the story of Maria Callas and her obsession with sadist men who actively destroyed her self-worth.
Imagine if Larrain had focused on Callas’s masochist affair with Onassis, with Jolie begging and groveling this contemptible man to allow her to be with him. Callas’s obsession with Onassis dominated her life and destroyed her confidence in her talent.
Jolie, a director herself, must have agreed with Larrain to display Callas a noble martyr to her art. But the exquisitely dressed Callas did not die a regal death. She had no visitors to dress for. I would have loved to have MARIA examine the destructive fascination that held Callas to such a cruel lover. Shockingly, Larrain sets a tender scene between Callas and the dying Onassis. He was a sadist and delighted in humiliating Callas privately and publicly. He often slapped her.
Jolie could have used raw passion to show Callas’s desire for Onassis and rage as she tried to seduce men who enjoyed inflicting pain on her. This would have been an Academy Award performance with lust, suffering, and degradation.
Screenwriter Steven Knight used a silly device of presenting a hallucinated interviewer, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as a shallow, colorless entity giving Callas a way to talk about her life. Considering it is Callas’s end-of-life, drug-fueled fantasy, Mandrax should have been portrayed as a demonic entity, provoking Callas to examine her life with unvarnished clarity.
Director Pablo Larrain insults the illustrious career of Maria Callas and should have shown how the failure of her voice was ridiculed by audiences and effectively destroyed the passion she had for opera.
Jolie, preferred to play the defiant Callas as a stoic presence instead of a crazed woman obsessed by a man who enjoyed hurting everyone, except, it seems, the great statesman, Sir Winston Churchill – also known as being a cantankerous blowhard.
The ALL is Mind; The Universe is Mental.”🍅 Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Critic.
For a complete list of Victoria Alexander's movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes go to:
Contributing to: FilmsInReview: http://www.filmsinreview.com
Member of Las Vegas Film Critics Society
Personal email: victoria.alexander.lv@gmail.com
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