WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for 2024’s Maria.Featuring some of the best spots in Europe,Mariamasterfully uses its locations to recount La Callas' haunting journey through fame and heartbreak. Set a week before her death, the movie sees the opera singer revisit her most characteristic performances in Milan, Covent Garden, Venice, and New York, all while she walks by some of the most beautiful scenery in Paris, where she spent her last years of life.Pablo Larraín completes his movie trilogyon female icons, pairing up with cinematographer Ed Lachman to bring Maria Callas' inner and outer world to life.
Angelina Jolie leadsMaria’s castwith powerful grace, treating Europe’s streets as if they were her permanent stage, and she is their favorite Diva. Benefiting from a fragmented narrative where reality, imagination, and memory form one story,Mariagets away with jumping from country to country as its subject tries to confront the events that stayed with her until her very last day.Reviews forMariadelight in its visual splendor, asLarraín expertly uses its popular European locations and Jolie’s performance speaks to the cities' relationship with the famed singer.
Paris, France
Various Locations
Desperate at her failure to regain her once magnificent voice, Maria escapes to the streets of Paris for nostalgic contemplation, sometimes bringing Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee) with her. Jolie’s character is no commonflâneuse, as even when she is visiting some truly outstanding landmarks, these function merely as a stage for the artist’s confessions and vices. Strangely, Paris seems to be responding to Maria’s desires, allowing her to find an orchestra always ready to play for her, a crew eager to film her story, and an audience that adores her despite her worst whims.
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With Maria, Angelina Jolie offers a haunting performance reminiscent of her 2000s characters, garnering deserved and anticipated critical acclaim.
Craving reflection and cathartic release,Maria visits the Palais du Trocadéro — where the Eiffel Tower functions as an elegant backdrop — walks through the evergreen Tuileries Garden, and watches the calm water at Pont Alexandre III.When her mood begs for adoration, her strolls take her to a café in front of Teatro Du Chatelet, which sparks a memory of the night she met Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer). Palais Garnier gives place to the inside theatre and sets the tone for an intoxicating romance, while Place Vendôme often carries the character in her moments of longing and obsession.
Budapest, Hungary
Museum Of Fine Arts, State Opera House, Maria’s Apartment, & Music Academy
Larraín’s second filming location was Hungary, functioning as the set for two of Maria’s safe havens— and which eventually saw her perform her most affecting tragedies. Finding a compassionate stage in a Paris theatre, the character uses it to practice.Jolie committed to singing specific songs inMaria, and the scenes were recorded in the Budapest Music Academy, whose small size contrasts strikingly with La Callas' past performances at some of the world’s best opera houses. The memories of those grand theatre halls filled with eager audiences intervene in her timid rehearsals, working to break her confidence.
The small theatre and Maria’s apartment eventually become sites of violence, as the first is intruded by a tormenting journalist, and the second witnesses the frail woman sing herself to death.
Maria’s production designer worked in collaboration with Larraín to create a set that resembled everything about Callas' real Paris apartment.Though the place was developed in Budapest, each element was meant to emulate the Diva’s everyday surroundings, from how the sun came through windows to every painting on the walls — creating a centering space that contrasted with the blue and black-and-white tone of Maria’s traumatic memories (viaTudum). The small theatre and Maria’s apartment eventually become sites of violence, as the first is intruded by a tormenting journalist, and the second witnesses the frail womansing herself to death inMaria’s ending.
Larraín’s other Budapest locations are far less intense, though they cleverly add to Maria’s fragmented reality. The director not only takes excellent advantage of some of the city’s landmarks but also finds a way to give them narrative purpose.One of Maria and Mandrax’s many interviews randomly takes place in Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts — perfectly aligning with Maria jumping between countriesin her delirious mind. Additionally, the State Opera House is used to represent a theatre in Venice where she performed in the past, adding an aria toMaria’s carefully chosen soundtrack.
Milan, Italy
La Scala
Inspired byMaria Callas’ true story, Larrain adaptsthe singer’s famous Anne Boleyn performance at Milan’s signature opera house. Though the movie features other historical theatres that saw the Diva’s best performances, none other is given the importance that La Scala has. Maria’s passionate reluctance to perform again is explained by her memory of Italy, showing her as the victim of people’s unforgiving attack when she canceled a show because of sickness. Bullied by public hatred, the obsessive artist returned to the stage, angry and forever wounded by her fans' double-edged adoration.
Katakolo, Elis, Greece
Aristotle Onassis’s Yacht
Apart from using The Apollo Public Theatre to adapt Maria’s performance at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden,the seasoned director features Greece in the short but beautiful sequence that marks the beginning of Maria and Aristotle Onassis' affair.Benefiting from the country’s idyllic shores, Larraín gives moving life to some real photographs where the lovers can be seen on the magnate’s yacht. The black and white filter, as well as the Katakolo coastlines, liken theMariascenes to a Michelangelo Antonioni film, successfully referencing some of the epoch’s most affecting love stories and demonstrating Larraín’s film education.
Maria
Cast
Maria(2024) is a biographical drama about opera singer Maria Callas, directed by Pablo Larraín, starring Angelina Jolie. It concludes Larraín’s trilogy on iconic women.
