‘Maria’ is a borderline insulting waste of time

By Isaac Steward

This review contains spoilers for “Maria”

“Maria” is a 2024 biographical psychological drama, following the final week of Maria Callas, widely considered to be the greatest female opera singer of the 20th century, Maria Callas, before her death at the age of 53 in 1977.

By this time in Maria’s life, she has long been retired from the stage, inflicted by a mysterious illness that has diminished her once legendary voice. Despite this, she still longs to sing, as opera is all she has ever known, no matter the strain it puts on her body. I wish I could say that there was more, but, in the greater picture of this movie’s runtime, there isn’t.

“Maria” is a terribly boring movie that abandons a perfect opportunity to tell the story of a great woman’s life as an icon of the arts; her humble beginnings, her complicated love life, the various factors of her premature retirement and her struggle to find identity outside of opera. Instead, this film is determined to show us what I think might have been the least interesting part of Callas’ life, especially considering that around 80% of what it shows us is basically made up. 

According to reputable sources, Callas was dependent on various medications, which resulted in hallucinations. This film over-relies on this aspect of her life in order to pad its runtime, a weak justification for drawn out, overly-stylized, oftentimes nonsensical scenes that add nothing to the greater narrative. Although to be fair, there isn’t really a greater narrative to add to in the first place. 

This movie has no stakes. There is no arc. There is no tension. There is only a sad, rich woman walking back and forth between her mansion and the opera house, indulging her gargantuan ego with self-indulgent hallucinations. And sometimes there’s a flashback. Although I cannot deny that this might be a more accurate interpretation of how Callas spent her final week (ignoring the vast majority of it being speculation), I can say quite confidently that it does not make for interesting cinema.

I’d be mildly impressed with the dialogue in this film if I read it in a poetry book written by high schoolers, but in the context of a biopic, it is very hard to listen to. Every character, especially Callas (played by Angelina Jolie), is trying way too hard to be clever all the time. Many of the lines that are said are meant to sound poetic, with every other line being a metaphor or clever one-liner that doesn’t even make sense within the context of the conversation. The overall effect is that none of the characters seem like real people and the overall production comes off as tacky and perhaps a bit pretentious if the over-stylized cinematography doesn’t do it first.

A prime example of this over-stylized cinematic style is the montage at the very beginning, right after we see Maria dead in her home, surrounded by medics and the two members of her staff. In this montage, we get to see seemingly random snippets of Callas’s life, meant to look like old news footage of various events in her life, only one of which is ever mentioned in the film or referred back to. Mixed in with shots of Angelina Jolie singing directly into the camera, the first four minutes of this film is essentially a music video. 

This is the longest instance of this sort of thing in the film, but it is not the only one. In the middle of the film, an imaginary orchestra plays on a street in Paris, France and Mandrax, her imaginary reporter, yells at her to sing and she refuses. She then hallucinates that she is surrounded by a group of Chinese women, wearing traditional Chinese garb, and she herself is wearing traditional Chinese garb and makeup and is crying in the rain. This is never referred back to. I don’t know what it means. I have serious doubts that it means anything. 

Because of the amount of stylized nothing in this film, I walk away with very little knowledge or insight into Maria Callas’ life. I also know next to nothing about who Callas was as a person. 

Jolie has received much critical acclaim for her performance, but I’m personally not impressed. Her portrayal of Callas’ character, whether her own fault, or that of the writer, or director, is stiff, cold and arrogant the entire time, with very little emotional range required. A film can never capture the true complexity of a person’s character, but this portrayal leads me to think the creators of this film didn’t even try, which is disappointing, to say the least.

“Maria” makes a vain attempt to distract from its weak script and lazy character analysis with beautiful music and somewhat creative cinematography, resulting in a drawn-out, over-indulgent, and, worst of all, mind-numbingly dull use of anyone’s time.

Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words clearly never watched “Maria.”

“Maria” is streaming on Netflix

Isaac Steward is a junior BDMJ student and an A&E writer for Cedars. He enjoys analyzing good stories and making cool things. Isaac has never been to the moon or enjoyed peanut butter. Most likely, he never will.

Images courtesy of Netflix.