Filmmaker Pablo Larrain does not like the word biopic.
“I don’t believe in biopics, I think they’re impossible, it’s an impossible duty,” he told The Nightly.
That might come off as a strange statement from the Chilean writer and director, who is known for his intimate cinematic portraits. He has made a movie about poet Pablo Neruda, and a trilogy about three of history’s most famous women — Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie), Princess Diana (Spencer), and now Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas.
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He admitted that his film can “never be completely truthful because you don’t know the truth”.
He has read nine biographies, every single document about her life, watched every interview and has listened to her music for four decades.
“The more you study her, the more enigmatic she is,” Larrain said. “To me, that is what motivates me to keep looking because it’s endless. If you were to say that you finally got someone, that you found the soul of that person, then the movie wouldn’t be needed.
“We’re here to show a woman that became the tragedy that she played on stage. She was the ultimate tragedy of all the characters that she played, including herself. That’s what I know because it’s true.
“You think you know them because you’ve seen them so often, but do you really know them? That is like a cultural fantasy. I am more drawn to the mystery, and that’s how I approach the characters.”
Larrain does not make sweeping films charting his subjects’ whole life, they are no biographies. Instead, he picks a moment in their stories and from there, explores a fictionalised version with imagined conversations and emotions.
In Jackie, it was the days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, in Spencer, it was the last Balmoral Christmas before her separation from Prince Charles.
Maria follows Callas’ last week before her death in 1977 at the age of 53. There are flashbacks to seminal moments in her life — her teenage years during World War II, her relationship with Aristotle Onassis — while she tries to mount a comeback even though her voice is greatly diminished.
An exceptional soprano with a velvety vocals and unrivalled command of the greats including Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s La Traviata, Callas was renowned for her artistic gifts but that also made her a magnet for all sorts of attention.
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She was tabloid fodder for her relationships and pilloried for “diva” behaviour. In parts of the world, especially in Italy and other parts of Europe, she would be considered by many to be more famous than Kennedy, who was later Callas’ competitor for Onassis’s affections.
But for those that are less familiar with her work, Larrain hopes the film will be a catalyst for them to discover her work.
Larrain said that week of her life was one of “enormous crisis” for Callas, and that’s why he picked it as that frame to share her story. His film is operatic in tone, as heightened and full emotion as the productions Callas were in.
Key to that is Jolie, who spent almost seven months training for the role, including learning how to sing opera. What you hear in the film is sometimes Jolie, blended with Callas, but the physicality of singing opera is so specific that if she was to be convincing on screen, there had to be a fidelity to the craft.
He was impressed with Jolie’s dedication and discipline. “She’s brilliant,” he said of his lead. “A brilliant human and a great, great actress.”
Jolie also had a similar quality to Callas in that Larrain also never felt as if he the more he met her, the less he could understand her.
“It’s the same thing. Angelina can carry that mystery, can play with it, can deal with it, can open the door for the audience to see her when she wants and then can put it away when she wants to.”
While there will always be a difference between a live performance and a film, Larrain contended that cinema can “bring a certain sensibility towards what opera is like” and that there is much in common between the two art forms.
Opera used to be for the masses, but with elaborate productions and limited venues, the ticket prices have made it prohibitive, and it’s become something for the elite.
But Larrain hoped that his film will shift the dynamic.
“I don’t know if this would change people’s minds about what they think is opera, and maybe this is wishful thinking, that there will be some people that will feel they are missing something that could be accessible to them by playing a record, or going to your streaming service and just listening to some of the great opera music.
“That is in the heart of this movie, the will of Maria Callas to bring opera back to where it started, to the people.”
Maria is in cinemas on January 30
