Maria

I come at this from a different angle. I was an opera singer for many years, and I did an E! Mysteries and Scandals about Maria Callas.

Though Angelina Jolie is luminous in the role, this was not really representative of the real Maria Callas. This is the fault of the script and the approach of the director.

First, I could have used more music instead of most of it being in the background. We see an audience standing and screaming "Bravo" after "Qui la voce." Except we didn't hear "Qui la voce," just a few bars and none of the coloratura.

This aloof attitude Callas had during her interviews, etc. Was not Maria. The interview she gave John Ardoin, where she asked that the tapes not be played until she was dead, with the most heartbreaking thing you would ever hear in your life. She was miserable, codependent, and never got over her relationship with Onassis. She was a very damaged woman. I really did not get a lot of of that from this film. Just an opinion.

There were also inaccuracies, but that's to be expected in a script that has to telescope a life.

Maria Callas was a great artist and a deeply complicated human being. This film did not come close to who she was.

The surprise of this glum biopic is at the end credits that show the real Maria Callas. And she's smiling! She's laughing! She's even...gasp...having fun!! Amazing, since, with the exception of a scene toward the end where she's playing cards with her butler and cook, you can get old waiting for a light moment from this misery fest. And when director Pablo Lorrain isn't drowning you in doom (the film should have been titled "Death In Paris") scenarist Steven Knight is showering you with pretension in dialogue that is excessively florid even by the standards of folks who make their living in opera.

So once again we have a biopic of a creative near genius without the creativity or the genius. Just endless self pity and self destruction. If it were not for the considerable acting talents of Ms. Jolie this thing would be utterly unwatchable. Well, that's not really true. Cinematographer Ed Lachman's beautiful evocation of the city of light makes it eminently watchable. And the music, of course, is heart breakingly lovely. But then Lorraine and Knight have to go and muck things up again with their relentless rain cloud of a movie. Give it a C plus.

Maria is a solid musical bio pic. A great lead performance from Angelina Jolie holds this movie together pretty well and I admire how much she put into this role, especially the opera singing. The plot is a little messy and the pacing is a tad off but I still think the movie is purely entertaining enough to enjoy and it is also educational about this time period and opera in general. It's a beautifully shot and directed movie. I love the editing and the black and white shots are gorgeous. I think this is a solid film from Pablo Larrain with a potential Oscar winning performance from Angelina Jolie.

I agree with blanche-2 and other reviewers, as a former opera student for many years and opera lover and connoisseur.

This may be a delight for those who like Angelina Jolie and like to see a beatiful face on screen, but nothing here resembles the unique quality of divine Maria.

For starters, this is the worse lip-sync I have seen in my life in a biopic of a singer, and it was a surprise that a movie supposed to be a first-rate production went ahead ignoring this major failure. After all, singing is to the essence of the film, it is not a secondary scene. And if you want to recreate Callas life using real recordings, the performative effort must be flawless. Of course it is as hard as demanding, but if you want to compare Jolie's playback what a remarkable, well-executed example, please watch La Mome, the biopic about Edith Piaf, and find delight in Marion Cotillard's perfect, unbelievably good execution. (Jolie's lack of sync is as unbelievable.)

Then, the physique du role. Jolie is one of the most beautiful actresses of our time. But it has physical disparities with Callas which cannot be solved with make-up, and the lack of resemblance spoils the effort. Callas's beauty was tempered, life-chiseled, acquired, a result of a deep effort at self-awareness and self-hardening and reshaping her destiny. That kind of subjective process simply «showed» in her regal attitude, and imposing scenic presence. Jolie is a born beauty, her beauty a gift given from the start, and, in my opinion, she did not manage to convey the dramatic depth of Callas's appeal enough as to create the magical impression that we are seeing a credible Callas.

Also, for those who love opera, Jolie's embouchure (the singers' «mouth mould») is a joke, nothing close to the unmistaken bel canto mouth frame which opera singers (and Callas) distinctively employ. It may seem an unimportant detail, but the sum of inconsistencies and lack of attention to detail ends up being irritating.

I have not listed other observations already pointed by reviewers, which which I concur, related to the use of music score, plot and realism. I really wanted to like the movie, but it was a total disappointment to me.

I am sure this film was made with great care and love, BUT what it lacked the most of, in my opinion is BREATH.

Opera singers learn how to controle their breath so to captivate ours. And I agree with the other less favourable reviews that the opening scene really was a bad example of lip-synching particularly because I could not see ms Jolie breathe!

Of course La Callas lived a glamorous life but to me the focus seemed to be more directed towards the visual in this movie.

This is a film that made me stop watching it to the end, and I am sorry for it. I too had high hopes for these two iconic ladies.