MAIR
Type: existential-musical biopic
Direction: Pablo Larraín. With Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Valeria Golino
After Jackie Kennedy And Diana Spencer, Larraín offers us another portrait of a woman struggling with a destiny that ends up crushing her, that of Maria Callas. And as in the two previous films everything is limited to a short period of time, here the last week of the soprano’s life.
The weight of memories takes care of broadening the gaze – the mother who “sold” her and her sister to the Nazis who occupied Greece, the never forgotten love for Aristotle Onassis – and of course the arias that made her famous. Moments that for Maria are not pure and simple memories (set in theaters all over the world, including Scala) but a means to delve into the knots of an existence that she feels is escaping her.
Angelina Jolie with Haluk Bilginer (Onassis) in “Maria” (photo Contrasto).
And from the very first minutes, thanks only to a small prosthetic nose, you forget that the one playing her is the most snobbish of Hollywood actresses because by truly using her voice (sometimes covered by Callas’s, other times not) she knows how to make the effort of the singing credible.
Offering us the portrait of a woman who lived only for her voice and who ends up confusing reality with memories (the beautiful scene at the Trocadero), desperate to soothe the wounds he carries inside.
For those who are not scared by an “out of the norm” portrait of Callas.
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