With Maria, he delivers another auteur vision of a woman who many may victimise but who finds her own inner strength and voice. Angelina Jolie spent seven months vocally training for the role, and it so clearly shows in a powerhouse performance full of poise, grace, and class but also viper-tongued diva outbursts.
She delivers a transcending performance as Maria Callas, the American-born Greek operatic soprano, during the final week of her life. By closely examining the legendary soprano as she grapples with her identity and life during her final days in 1970s Paris, Lorraín explores how Callas navigated the adoring gaze of her admirers and yearned for that attention in her waning years.
Maria Callas was a classic operatic class act – whose beauty intoxicated men and whose voice entranced audiences. Her beauty and grace are captured so magnetically by Ed Lachmann’s gorgeous cinematography and beauty matched by the magnificent setting of 1970s Paris. Lorraín’s use of dreams, visions and surrealist fantasies helps add a layer of hypnotic haze, which slows the film’s pace but keeps Maria at the centre. As Callas’ health failed and mind faltered, she began to indulge increasingly delusional fantasies in a quest to find the validation, recognition and adulation she had earlier received in her career and craved after that. All of this builds to an ending that may be one of the most remarkable in any film of 2024, leaving audiences both heartbroken and transfixed as Callas sings one last time.
This project is a mesmerising character study of the divine dame, played with powerful grace in a career-best performance. Jolie sings her soul out in an artful exploration of the dying days of a diva in demure decline yet still filled with stunning beauty.
Maria is rated M and is in cinemas now.
Vanity, Vanity, Everything is Vanity
Maria Callas was a stunning beauty and talented diva, but her looks and talent could not last forever. She clung to what was fleeting. She craved adulation and adoration, but it never truly satisfied her.
The book of Ecclesiastes is full of wisdom for living in this fleeting life where nothing seems to truly last. But in all of its pessimism about the “meaninglessness” of life, the teacher of wisdom also encourages us to still enjoy the good in life and look to that which is eternal—a relationship with God. Suppose you have ever felt like your life is meaningless. In that case, we recommend reading Ecclesiastes and thinking about what is eternal.
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” Ecclesiastes 2:1-4
Article supplied with thanks to City Bible Forum.
About the author: Michael Walsh is a Missions Engagement Minister in Sydney, and an avid film fan. His love of film is surpassed only by his love of God, and his desire to make the Gospel known.
All images: Movie publicity
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