After three years away from the big screen – and a lot of her private life splashed across the pages thanks to her ongoing acrimonious divorce from Brad Pitt – Angelina Jolie is back with a bang.
And that’s tackling the role of world-renowned opera diva Maria Callas, with all the required singing too, despite never even having done karaoke before.
Her previous film, Marvel’s Eternals, was much hyped but ultimately flopped at the box office and her previous big films of the past decade have been Maleficent and its sequel for Disney, where she gave an emotional backstory to the famous Sleeping Beauty villain.
So there’s a sense that Maria, which premiered today at Venice Film Festival, is Jolie back to business and basics as an artist – and as an actress that netted an Academy Award over 20 years ago for her supporting turn in Girl, Interrupted.
Maria, directed by Pablo Larraín, is seen as the final film in the Chilean filmmaker’s trilogy about iconic women after 2016’s Jackie about JFK’s wife Jackie Kennedy and 2021’s Spencer about Princess Diana.
Both films netted their leading ladies – Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart respectively – Academy Award nominations for best actress.
So, with that precedent set, it’s fair to say that’s likely what Jolie has in her sights, even if she gracefully side-stepped the question about it at the Venice Maria press conference.
She told reporters that ‘the bar in this where I would know if I did good enough are the Maria Callas fans and those who love opera’ and that her ‘fear would be to disappoint them’.
Jolie was previously also nominated for an Academy Awards for best actress for Changeling in 2009.
The star added: ‘In my own business if there’s a response to the work, I’m very grateful, but in my heart to disappoint the people who love her and who she means a lot to, and her legacy, I came to care for her – I didn’t want to do a disservice to this woman.’
And reader, she does not.
As the film’s synopsis explains: ‘Maria tells the tumultuous, beautiful, and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest female opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris.’
So far, the public has only seen a brief clip of Jolie as ‘La Callas’, arguing with her longtime butler, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, about her medication and seeing a doctor.
It’s a taste of what’s to come, but in terms of Jolie’s performance, it doesn’t reveal much.
In the full movie, which runs at a shade over two hours and has just been snapped up by Netflix in the US, the actress is subtle but controlled.
With more room to breathe than the mere minute or so in the teaser, the restraint of her performance wins you over.
Jolie shows Callas as a diva harder on herself than anyone else, even if she does have her staff fruitlessly seeking the optimal spot for her grand piano each day.
Maria dives deep into the psychological torture the legendary performer is seen putting herself through as she mourns the loss of her once-in-a-generation voice and wallows in a pill addiction so strong it’s cleverly anthropomorphised in the form of actor Kodi Smitt-McPhee.
Of course, that’s a huge ask of any actor to replicate, even one who’s a confident singer – which Jolie confirmed she very much is not.
‘Everybody here knows I was terribly nervous,’ Jolie admitted at the press conference, pointing to her fellow cast and crew.
‘I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo, you can’t do anything by half, he demands in the most wonderful way that you really do the work and learn and train.’
She also revealed that she was so nervous her first time singing, with her sons on hand, that they ‘had to lock the door to make sure no one else was coming in’.
‘I was shaky. Pablo started me in a small room and ended me in La Scala. I was frightened.’
Luckily, because the bar is not set to match Callas at her unrivalled best due to the storyline, Jolie is not aiming for perfection.
We can forgive a difference in tone and quality between Jolie’s efforts and the original recordings of Callas herself.
However, the musicality, the pitch and the technique is all there – as well as an innate talent that proves Jolie is up to the task.
Larraín confirmed as well that in their 6-7 month preparation together, he had the star focus on breathing, posture and then lyrics as the movie whips through many well-known and celebrated arias, from the likes of Anna Bolena, Carmen, La traviata and I puritani.
For Maria, Jolie appears to have forgone any obvious facial prosthetics to transform herself more convincingly, physically, into Callas after the controversy stirred up by Dame Helen Mirren and Bradley Cooper both donning fake noses to play real-life Jewish figures Golda Meir and Leonard Bernstein.
Callas also boasted a gorgeously grand Greek nose, but that’s not particularly in evidence here.
But a major issue with Jolie being an actress and also one of the most famous women in the world is always being instantly recognisable as yourself.
Therefore it does take a minute to warm up to her as Callas but once she’s won you over, Jolie delivers a masterclass in reminding you exactly why it is she’s so famous.
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