Critics reviews

All three are beautifully realized films featuring searing performances and tight scripts, but Maria especially suits the mixture of glamour and anguish inherent in its story arc. It’s a crushing portrayal of a woman’s loss of vitality and her patchwork efforts to retain some dignity even as her control over her life and her talent slip away.

Following “Jackie” and “Spencer,” the filmmaker’s haunting trilogy is rounded out with “Maria.” All three films are bleak yet feature terrific performances by the three actresses.

Character and actor blend so seamlessly, so ferociously, that you leave not just with heightened empathy for La Callas but Jolie as well.

“Maria” brings opera to the masses, not as a gimmick or high-minded endeavor, but as an act of generosity and understanding that art belongs to everyone who wants to appreciate it. In that, as Larraín purposely and studiously braids in arias into his narrative—full songs for the most part, and not frustratingly chopped up snippets—and gives you a taste of everything from Bellini to Puccini to Donizetti, you’ll feel like you’ve had a full musical meal, with a hunger for a second helping.

Jolie certainly fits her leading role, even if her resemblance to Callas is less visual than it is emotional and aural. Months of vocal lessons for the Oscar winner paid off; she impressively handles the singing, which is supplemented in some scenes by Callas’s own voice.

“Maria” is remote in ways Larraín’s earlier films aren’t, yet that remoteness is somehow a key to its power. The film’s a threnody — a lamentation — and a reminder that we go to the opera, and sometimes the movies, to measure the incalculable distance between the gods and ourselves.

This is an exquisitely filmed and at times deeply melancholy portrait of an artist who had once made the rafters of great opera houses hum with her bel canto technique and had been mobbed by fans and adored by millions, but spent her last week surrounded by the echoes of sadness.

Callas isn’t exactly a woman you identify with but can admire for her talent and how unapologetically she lived her life. This beautifully rendered film is an opportunity to see why.

Maria serves as a poignant swan song for Larraín’s unofficial trilogy, led by a transcendent and career-best performance from Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie.

Jolie is absolutely transfixing as Maria. She dons an elegant, measured purr of a voice and a lion’s gait, graceful and strong... The minutiae of Jolie’s face when she sings is an acting feat, lips bending and curling in perfect step with the veteran vibrato as her eyebrows lift and furrow through every emotion imaginable.

As Larraín and Spencer screenwriter Steven Knight imagine these pivotal days, the resulting film is, unfortunately, lesser than the sum of its parts. However, each of those elements is so individually exquisite as to yield material that not only proves incredibly moving, but also provides Jolie with a platform to craft what is perhaps the most complex performance of her illustrious career.

"Maria" stands out as a fitting swan song (of sorts) by putting a bow on this spiritual "trilogy" of biopics – one that's every inch as soulful, heartbreaking, and beautifully contradictory as the woman herself.