The reviews for the Maria Callas biopic “Maria” are in and there’s quite the mix to behold.
The movie, which stars Angelina Jolie, is seeing raves for the lead actress with Deadline stating, “Jolie is an almost magical match for the real diva: achingly thin but still beautiful, loftily patrician, capriciously kind or selfish, tip-toeing dangerously close to madness. The actor’s commitment to this creation is obvious at every turn.” The trade magazine went as far as to say that her performances was immediately vaulted into the Oscar conversation.
The Telegraph gave the film four stars and said “Angelina Jolie dazzles as the opera diva in her finest performance in a decade.”
Next Best Picture also raved about Jolie noting she gives a “soulful and heartbreaking portrayal” and “She, too, is a diva when it comes to the big screen, and it’s so exciting to see her in a project that allows her to fully showcase her dramatic range.”
The Guardian also gave the film four stars and raved, “Jolie is a painting to be stared at in Pablo Larraín’s opulent drama, tottering around Paris in the 70s and drawing us in to tragedy as thoroughly as Bellini or Puccini”
However, the film is also getting a mixed reception with IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich noting, “this claustrophobic psychodrama is so focused on freeing its subject from her own legend that it struggles to convey who she is or was beyond it.” Ehrlich adds, “If not for Jolie, it’s possible that ‘Maria’ would feel like another form of the unfounded scrutiny that made Callas’ life so miserable; more sensitive, perhaps, but still cobbled together from echoes that are made to sound like a single voice. ”
Variety was also negative, stating, “by the end of ‘Maria’ you almost feel like it’s taken the life out of the movie.”
BBC was also mixed on the film adding, “Pablo Larraín’s fact-based drama, starring Angelina Jolie as opera diva Maria Callas, is witty and beautiful,” but “this Callas is an icon rather than a human being,” and some scenes are “less opera than soap opera.”
