They called her La Callas.
Her full name was Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos, a complex name for (her mother believed) a rather unremarkable girl.
But Maria—who took the last name Callas while in primary school—could sing. Boy, could she sing. And when she took the stage in Venice in 1949—forced into the spotlight when the starring soprano got sick—she became remarkable indeed. Her powerful, emotive voice enthralled the world of opera; her style made fans nearly drunk with awe. When they listened to her, their spirits soared and their hearts broke.
La Callas, they called her. Or, sometimes, La Divina. The Divine One.
That was long ago, of course. By September 1977, she lives in Paris, a near recluse. Maria spends her days with Ferruccio, her butler and chauffer; Bruna, her cook and maid; and her fame. Always her fame. The two of them go hand-in-hand, Maria and her fame. And sometimes she invites others to join her. She goes to restaurants to be admired. Every so often, she grants interviews to a fawning film crew.
Why, she’s in the midst of one such interview now.
The young documentarian introduces himself as Mandrax. He asks gentle, probing questions. The man behind the camera remains unnamed. But, of course, that’s fine with La Callas. They are here for her, not she for them. They want to know about her life, her past, her music, her end.
As she talks, Ferruccio and Bruna exchange familiar, concerned looks. Film crew? No, there is none. Mandrax is the name of the drug she takes—morning and evening and hours between.
Perhaps Maria knows this.
But perhaps for La Callas, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is to tell her story—to shape it as she wants, just as she shaped every immortal operatic part she ever played. Medea. Elvira. Aida. Weren’t they just as fictional? Did she not make them real? Did she not breathe life into them with her voice—make them more tangible, more essentially real than any anonymous ticketholder brought to tears? Did she not create herself? Transform an overweight, clumsy girl forced into unspeakable acts of servitude by her mother into La Callas?
“As of this morning, what is real and what is not real is my business,” she sharply says.
And so she talks with her invisible crew as she contemplates a return to stage—trying to bring life to a voice that opera says is gone.
And so, soon, will she be gone. So, soon, will she.
Maria still has plenty of admirers, but Ferruccio and Bruna appear to be her only real friends in 1977. And perhaps, in a way, they’re family—closer to the opera star than her real family ever was. She admits to someone that they are as much father and mother to her as butler and cook. And Maria would clearly be lost without them.
It’s touching to see how devoted they are to her, even if one could argue that, at times, it’s misguided. Ferruccio takes a punch at an aggressive reporter, for instance, and Bruna seems to lie regarding the quality of Maria’s now-diminished voice. But their affection and care for Maria are unfeigned. And sometimes, their love of their employer overrides the risk of her wrath. Ferruccio hides Maria’s pills and forces her to see a doctor, and Maria is furious over both. But part of her also understands and appreciates what he’s trying to do.
“I fall into a river, and you always fish me out,” she tells him.
As an employer, Maria is imperious and demanding and, occasionally, cruel. But, in her own strange way, she seems to care for them as much as they care for her. And when she senses that her own time is nearing an end, she suggests that they should remain together after she’s gone.
Maria’s romance with the rich, famous shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis is a central part of the story we see here. During a trip aboard the Onassis yacht, he takes Maria into his bedroom and shows him one of his prized treasures: an ancient statue of the Greek god Hermes.
“Hermes is my god,” Onassis says. Hermes is the patron deity for merchants, travelers and thieves—elements that Onassis also has an affinity for. “If I want something, I steal it,” he says. He stole the statue himself, and he’s openly planning to steal Maria away from her husband. He tells Maria at a party that people have come just “to worship you.”
But Onassis has a wandering eye. Soon he’s calling another married woman a “goddess.” But in his own last days, Onassis tells Maria that his spirit “will find a chair by the harbor and watch the ships.” He invites Maria to join him there in the afterlife.
We see a number of other classical statues throughout the movie, some of them in Maria’s own massive closet; many are meant to depict Greek and Roman gods.
Some operas the film alludes to have religious underpinnings, and we see the occasional church. When someone asks Maria why she no longer sings, Maria says, “I am afraid audiences expect miracles. I no longer perform miracles.”
In flashback, we see Litsa Callas—mother of Maria and her sister, Yakinthi—essentially sell both of her daughters to Nazi soldiers during the German occupation of Greece in World War II. Litsa forces both girls to sing and dance for a couple of German soldiers (a performance that we learn was a fairly regular thing). In the next scene, a young Maria begins to slip off her dress (exposing her shoulder). But the soldier stops her. “No, not now,” he says. “Just sing.”
In 1977, Maria meets Yakinthi in a restaurant. They commiserate over how the German soldiers wouldn’t leave them alone. Yakinthi confesses that she sometimes took Maria’s place, “so you could rest.”
As mentioned, we hear quite a bit about the affair between Maria and Onassis. The shipping magnate begins his seduction in the presence of Maria’s husband. He announces that he’s also married, “but it’s 1959,” suggesting that out-of-wedlock affairs are more-or-less accepted in the circles they run in.
Later, when Onassis’ affections trail after Jaqueline Kennedy (wife, of course, of President John F. Kennedy), Maria’s well aware of the affair—as is JFK. Kennedy asks for a meeting with Maria, perhaps in an effort to jumpstart his own affair with the opera singer, but Maria shrugs him off. We’re also treated to Marilyn Monroe’s famous rendition of “Happy Birthday” to JFK, with Maria and others well aware of Kennedy’s illicit connection with the actress.
Throughout all of this infidelity, the movie Maria steers well clear of sexual scenes. We see hands held and the occasional embrace, but the story examines a different sort of intimacy: that raw, emotional intimacy when character lays bare secrets she barely knows she has.
The movie opens on Sept. 16, 1977, when Maria Callas was found dead in her apartment. Her body is largely hidden from view—shielded by a conveniently-placed chair—as officials shuffle around and murmur to one another. The bulk of the film is, thus, told in flashback, and we do see the moment of her death. (We also hear about her health problems.)
Mandrax (Maria’s imaginary interviewer) asks Maria about the baby that she allegedly was forced to abort while carrying on an affair with Onassis. Maria seems to tell Mandrax that, rather, she miscarried. “My body declined the invitation to make another self,” she says.
On stage, we watch Maria (when her voice is in full power and glory) in the title role of the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, performing what is just called “the mad scene,” holding a knife and daubed with stage blood.
As mentioned, Ferruccio slugs somebody. Onassis is at times referred to as a brute.
Eight f-words and … that’s almost it. We do hear two uses of “h—” and three misuses of God’s name. But otherwise, the film seemed determined to get an R-rating and, once it did, it didn’t go much farther.
Maria takes, and abuses, prescription drugs. Most critical of those drugs? Mandrax—a sedative that went by the name of Quaalude in the United States. Ferruccio is well aware that she’s using more than is prescribed, and when he encourages her to get her use under control, she says, “It is under control. It is under my control.”
It could fairly be argued that the drugs are controlling Maria. She’s clearly delusional and hallucinatory at times, and she admits to someone that she’s not completely sure that she’s not an illusion. (And honestly, neither are we.) Suspecting that Ferruccio will take away her drugs, she begins hiding them in the pockets of her clothes and costumes. And when Ferruccio successfully does confiscate the drugs, she writes to her sister to send her some. (She does.)
We also see her drink wine frequently (which we learn is very dangerous when combined with Mandrax). And in the movie’s many flashbacks, we see her and other characters float about posh parties, always with a glass in hand.
Characters smoke.
The real Maria Callas had a very fractured relationship with her mother, and the movie shows us the damage. Neither she nor her sister has much nice to say about their mom.
Bruna worries that Maria has stopped eating. “She hasn’t eaten for three days,” she tells Ferruccio. “Last time she hadn’t eaten for four days,” Ferruccio says—indicating that it’s not time to worry. Yet.
When Maria dines alone at a posh Parisian café, the bartender begins playing an album featuring, of course, Maria Callas. You’d think she would be flattered, but she demands that the man turn it off: She never listens to her own recordings. When the bartender protests, telling her that the recording is “perfect,” Maria’s fury doubles.
“A song should never be perfect!” she says. “It should be performed!” For Maria, music lives, breathes, moves in the moment and changes with each performance—not frozen in time.
Maria, the movie, seems to embrace a bit of that ethos.
Certainly, Maria is frozen, as all films are. Turn it on five years from now, or 50, it’ll be the same movie it is as I write these words. But Angelina Jolie’s performance as Maria Callas offers many of the same qualities of the real Callas at her best: Emotive but structured; imbued with power and even arrogance, but somehow deeply, painfully vulnerable. This is, in my opinion, Jolie’s finest work.
But the movie in which she works is not perfect.
Many of the issues we see on screen are a matter of history, of course. Her dalliance with the real Aristotle Onassis is a matter of tabloid record. Callas’ drug use and abuse was, perhaps, underplayed in the film. Indeed, many difficult aspects of Callas’ real life were brushed aside or only hinted at. The real Onassis, for instance, could be physically abusive—a reality that Maria barely nods to. “All Greek men beat their women,” Onassis once said according to The Times. “He who loves well beats well.”
Given the movie’s restraint in other areas, the eight f-words in Maria feel unnecessary, even salacious. A cynic might say the screenplay included just enough profanity to snag an R rating and sought nothing more.
And so, when all is over and the thin lady sings, Maria is much like Callas itself: complex, frustrating, melodramatic. But when it finds its voice, it can be achingly beautiful.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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