(Venice) With Mariawhere he recounts the last days of Callas in Paris, Pablo Larraín closes his trilogy of “ladies in high heels”, which includes Jackie (2016) And Spencer (2021), where Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart played Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Princess Diana respectively. This time, it is Angelina Jolie that the Chilean filmmaker, who met the media on Thursday after the screening of the film, called upon to play the central role of a biographical drama where reality flirts with fantasy.
“Why not?” the filmmaker replied when the moderator asked him why he wanted to make a film about Maria Callas. “I have admired her since my youth and I am intrigued by the fact that there are so few films about opera. So I wanted to make a film about the greatest voice in the world, to celebrate her life, her career, her music. Without Steven Knight’s script and Angelina Jolie’s performance, this film would not have been possible.”
“My fear with this film is to disappoint those who love Maria Callas and those who know opera,” revealed Angelina Jolie, who notably listened to the classes given by La Divina to prepare for the role. “Having developed goodwill towards her, I would understand their disappointment. I would like this film to bring more people to opera, which is a powerful art form.”
Twilight drama written by Steven Knight and carried by the voice of La Divina, Mariain official competition, begins on September 16, 1977, in the sumptuous apartment of Maria Callas, whose remains can be seen on the floor. Two key figures in the singer’s life appear, petrified with emotion: her maid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher, Elena in the series My Brilliant Friend) and his valet Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino, Abbot Faria in The Count of Monte Cristo).
PHOTO YARA NARDI, REUTERS
Pierfrancesco Favino, Angelina Jolie, Pablo Larraín, Alba Rohrwacher and Steven Knight before the press conference of Maria
“I knew he was still alive, I was able to see an interview and read the book that tells of his life with Callas,” said the Italian actor. “Thanks to the script, I understood Ferruccio’s devotion to her. Meeting someone like Callas is a bit like her light becoming yours, she was a queen of Egypt. Working with Angelina Jolie made me understand what my character must have felt in front of Callas.”
“I agree with Pierfrancesco,” added Alba Rohrwacher, who, like her compatriot, plays her part with great nuance. “Thanks to Angelina, to her generosity, I understood the love that Bruna portrays in the style of Callas.”
“The three of them were a real family,” says screenwriter Steven Knight. “They weren’t in a relationship of employees to their boss; they were protecting her. There was real love between the three of them. When someone has a gift like Callas’s, others feel a force of attraction. When you listen to Callas, who is the most beautiful human noise there is, you discover the depth of her soul.”
Credible Angelina Jolie
Flashback a week. In failing health, with a frail but always elegant figure, Maria Callas claims that the great love of her life, the extremely wealthy shipowner Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer, the Turkish actor seen in Winter sleep), who disappeared two years earlier, visits her at night. While she persists in trying to find her voice again, at the risk of her life, the singer begins a series of interviews with a man named Mandrax (Kodi Smith-McPhee, who also appears in the series Disclaimer presented at the Mostra), named after the drugs she swallows like candy. Even when she meets her older sister Jackie (Valeria Golina), whose beauty she envied, Maria no longer knows whether she is hallucinating or not.
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Angelina Jolie in Maria
“Maria had a tragic sense of life; she excelled in bel canto and tragedies,” recalled Pablo Larraín. “I didn’t want to make a dark film, but to celebrate a woman who, after spending her life singing for the whole world, finally decides to think about herself.”
However, of the three parts of the trilogy, Maria proves to be the most moving. Certainly, the arias sung by Callas move to tears and pierce the soul, while Pablo Larraín draws from them dreamlike tableaux of great beauty in the most charming places in Paris.
As for Angelina Jolie, who trained for seven months in classical singing, she proves credible in the moments when she is on stage, reprising the singer’s greatest roles. You have to see her face distorted by pain and humiliation in Anna Bolena, Jolie’s favorite opera, when her character loses her mind. Like Callas, she seems to have drawn on her own emotions in order to express those of Maria and Anna.
“More than anything, I recognize myself in her sweetness and vulnerability,” the actress confided, referring to the personal difficulties she has encountered in recent years. “I felt protected by Pablo, who was kind enough to have me shoot the opera scenes from the smallest hall to La Scala. I was terribly nervous during these scenes. You will notice that the chosen pieces speak much more of Callas’s life than we think and that the characters she played forged the woman she was. At one point, I asked Pablo: are we shooting a musical?”