Chilean director Pablo Lorraín is back with the third and final part of his “Important Women” trilogy. Following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, Maria follows the final week in the life of famed opera singer Maria Callas. Callas (Angelina Jolie) gradually succumbing to an advanced illness tries to reclaim her legacy as both an artist and as a woman. She recounts her life from her harrowing upbringing in occupied Greece to her rise on the opera stage to then losing her voice and trying to reclaim it back which symbolically represents her freedom from the shackles that dominated her entire life.

If you were to read that synopsis and think this film is your run of mill awards bait biopic, you’d be kind of wrong. Yes, it does have its moments that’d fit perfectly into a sizzle reel on Oscar night and yes, it’s got Angelina Jolie as the lead who’s an Academy darling and yes, its overall plot is more in the vein of your generic biopic but in the hands of Larraín its totally different beast. Even for his own work this stuff is ambitious. The visuals are top notch, so many variations on the look and feel of this film at any one time. Ed Lachman has done, yet again, a great job at pushing the celluloid to its absolute max. Multiple shooting formats, a range of different colour palettes including monochrome and a lot of framing to match the film styles of the time frame. It’s all very impactful and shows a master at work.

The dialogue is also well composed, Stephen Knights script lends its hand to harking back to old Hollywood with lines that would easily slip into a Billy Wilder production. This is especially evident in the dynamic Callas has with her butler/ guardian Ferruccio (played with restraint by Pierfrancesco Favino). There’s a touch of Norma Desmond too in Jolie’s performance with her trying to claw back some of her talent and history with self-destructive patterns, all of which inevitably aid in her death that opens the picture. Callas also has her own parallel subplot of a fictional documentary crew following her as she recounts her life, covering for the most part her entanglement with famed Greek Oligarch Aristole Onassis (Haluk Bilginer in great form). Even Casper Philipson’s JFK from Jackie. Oh, and there are musical sequences all in between.

If this all sounds like a lot it’s because it very much is. Lorraín is throwing the entire Kitchen set at the audience here and while I applaud the effort it could really do with some restraint. The constant bouncing back and forth from film types, timelines, tonal switches and even genres never really gel together. The editing is all over the place for the most part with really only the last 20 or so minutes really showing the potential of the what the film could’ve been if it was more balanced. I won’t go into spoilers but there’s this great use of time and space for a Callas performance that made me lament for the picture Maria could’ve been. If it followed the direction of Lorraín’s last two outings it would have probably worked but I can see that complacency wasn’t an option here.

Each individual piece of the story is well made, they just don’t fit together. The plot has too much to handle with too many characters spread out thinly. Is docu crew, helmed by Kodi Smit-McPhee, really necessary? Are the sudden musical numbers and winks at the audience adding any weight? Theres just too much overlap here which is really a shame. Ambitious as it is Maria kind of proves less is more and ends Pablo Lorraín’s trilogy on more of a bum note rather than an epic crescendo.

Rating 3/5

  • Directed by:Pablo Lorraín
  • Written by: Steven Knight
  • Starring: Angelina Jolie
  • Runtime: 2hr 4min
  • Released:  Dec. 11th, 2024 (US) | Jan. 10th, 2025 (IE)

Review by Marcus Rochford.

Maria Trailer