I didn’t need to see Maria, the movie starring Angelina Jolie about the last week of Maria Callas’s life to know that it would feature a woman disintegrating as she remembers past triumphs and disasters. Chilean director Pablo Larraín has form—his last two movies showed Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana crumbling under the world’s gaze—so why would a movie about La Callas, the woman who redefined opera in the 20th century, be any different? Why wouldn’t you make a movie where Jolie channels Miss Havisham in a floor length crochet house coat, or Norma Desmond in outsize sunglasses?
Well, as someone who has spent the last five years living with Maria Callas’ life and story while I wrote my novel Diva, I would say that the reasons were pretty obvious. Jackie Bouvier and Diana Spencer became world famous through marriage; Maria Callas became an international star through her own talent and dedication. There is a world of difference between being thrust into the spotlight by marriage like Jackie and Diana, and spending your whole life looking for it, as Maria did.
The new film, which is now on Netflix, bears more relation to the last act of a Puccini opera like Madam Butterfly or La Bohème than it does to the facts, presenting Maria as a drug addled recluse who is broken by the death of her faithless lover Onassis, and the loss of her miraculous voice. Larrain and his screenwriter clearly didn’t let inconvenient facts like Maria’s plans to direct operas, give more masterclasses, or her relationship with the tenor Di Stefano stand in the way of crafting a nomination-garnering tragic operatic finale for Jolie.
Of course, all biopics to some extent manipulate the facts to make a more dramatic story, but with Callas as with other famous women like Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe, I have to wonder why the emphasis is always on the last chapter. Baz Luhrmann’s recent film about Elvis did Presley the justice of showing us his entire career, the same goes for the biopics of Johnny Cash or Ray Charles. But when it comes to famous women, there seems to be an unwritten rule that the only interesting part of their lives is when it falls apart.
Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in “Maria.” / Courtesy of Netflix
Even The Iron Lady, the film about Margaret Thatcher starring Meryl Streep was set in her dementia-ridden twilight years. It is partly a question of budget—it’s a lot cheaper to concentrate on the last gasp than the whole life..
Still, it’s as if the movie business thinks that women are still not allowed to have it all, that their fame and success must come at the expense of either their children or their mental health. As Callas didn’t have children, (which, in the logic of female biopics, makes her dying alone in her Parisian apartment inevitable) the only possible end is a lethal dose of addiction and self pity.
Pierfrancesco Favino as Ferruccio, Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas and Alba Rohrwacher as Bruna in Maria. / Pablo Larraín/Netflix
Maria Callas once said, “I am as difficult as I need to be to achieve perfection.” If Steve Jobs had said that, it would be on a T-shirt worn by everyone in Silicon Valley, but the resilience and toughness of a soprano who demanded and got higher fees than the tenors is completely missing from the childless poodle lady of Larrain’s film. The one redeeming feature of the film, apart from the crochet house coat that Jolie wears, is, of course, the soundtrack. But what an irony to use that unmistakably ferocious voice to embellish this denial of Callas’s strength and power.
The award-winning TV writer and director Daisy Goodwin is creator of Victoria, shown on Masterpiece PBS, and author of Diva, a novel about Maria Callas.
