MARIA

Maria is neither a great nor even a particularly interesting film but it is a strangely moving one. On the turntable of my parents, the voice of Maria Callas was an introduction to opera and it put me off for many years. It seemed rich and powerful but also quite shrill, almost angry. Later I learnt opinion of the diva's impressive range was somewhat divided and it became more so once it had passed its peak in her mid-thirties. An attempt to revive her career on the cusp of her sixth decade led to humiliation and despair. 

Those who know about opera may place sopranos like Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi and Montserrat Caballe above Callas, but the latter will almost certainly have the greatest name recognition among opera goers and the general public. Partly it was to do with her extraordinary personality and charisma as much as her astonishing voice. There were also the public tantrums, her legendary rudeness and hauteur and her destructive long term affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Once the power of her voice had faded, she nevertheless sustained and embellished her image as a diva such as she became an archetype while flirting with parody. She aged beautifully and her speaking voice had a velvety timbre to it that belied the powerful and intimidating cadences of her stage one.

The film by Pablo Larrain is set in the final week of her life in 1977 (when she was aged 53) and anyone expecting a biopic will be disappointed. Instead, we are treated to what is mostly an extended "dream sequence" using an imagined interviewer as a (rather hackneyed) framing device for the highs and lows of her life. Callas is portrayed by Angelina Jolie who gives a wonderful and compelling, if not quite wholly believable performance: it's easier to say "That's Angelina Jolie playing Callas" rather than "That's Maria Callas". Nonetheless, to the extent the diva's voice was considered unique, the brickbats the movie has received for its lip-syncing to Callas' finest operatic moments seem both unfair and irrelevant. Jolie (who trained for the part) seems well up for it and even manages to produce the later and much faded performing voice of Callas on her own, a pretty impressive achievement in itself.

In a film devoid of much action (most of it is set in a monstrously rococo apartment in Paris), Jolie nonetheless commands attention from beginning to end. By the close of her life, Callas is sustained by a diet of pills, alcoholic cordials and the desperate hope she might re-discover her earlier voice. She is attended by a butler and housekeeper and in wonderful performances, they each minister to her with concerned and honest devotion while tolerating her more diva-ish demands such as continually moving her grand piano around the parquet floor to a "better" position. For the curious or the already initiated, the setting and pace of the film is highly suggestive of the work of Visconti with whom Callas enjoyed a fruitful collaboration. This culminated in her 1957 performance in Donizetti's Anna Bolena at La Scala, arguably the high point of her singing career and a motif throughout the film.

Sadly, Aristotle Onassis cannot be avoided. In one of the few scenes that stretches credulity, Callas is beguiled by his gross and bombastic chat -up lines rather than giving him the smack round the chops which he so richly deserves. The source of his destructive hold over Callas, as depicted in the film, is a total mystery. Aside from his wealth he had little to commend him in real life while confirming Callas' apparent predilection for older toad - like men. But at least her first husband, Menighini, was kind and provided the crucial patronage for her early career. The film is honest enough not to claim that Callas was a victim in all this; indeed her self-destructive tendencies were well known and in real life she lurched between haughtiness and crushing moments where she lost all self-confidence. However, this aspect of the inner life of the diva is never really explored, yet is arguably crucial to the understanding of her later art and personality.

Instead, Angelina shimmers around beautifully, strolls through dead leaves, gives the odd waiter and unlucky tourist a tongue lashing and hides sedatives in her ancient stage costumes. The greatest hits are all there as performances in their own right and are truly moving, if you are moved by such things. They also do sterling work in holding the film in the realm of melancholy rather than bathos. In the end, Angelina-as-Callas manages a final blast through the windows of her apartment, as the uninitiated hoi-polloi stand in the street below with a look of the respect which was denied her by aficionados in the declining stages of her career: it is a nice touch. 

I don't really get opera, but I did shed a tear.