Maria is less a cradle-to-career biography than a memory-haunted portrait of Maria Callas’s final days in Paris. Angelina Jolie gives it the grandeur and focus of a star turn; the film’s fractured, reverential form is also what keeps the woman behind the legend at a distance. It may move you as an opera-shaped elegy, but it does not always bring Callas’s personality into clear view.
What is Maria about?
Directed by Pablo Larraín and written by Steven Knight, Maria runs 123 minutes and is listed in English and Greek by the Venice Film Festival. It imagines Callas’s last days in 1970s Paris, moving between her late-life present and memories of her youth, career, romances and stage triumphs. The Associated Press review describes the present-day story as a week in September 1977.
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That structure matters to the experience. This is a subjective historical drama, not a comprehensive account of Callas’s life or career. Its recollections arrive like fragments of a mind revisiting its own mythology, so the film asks viewers to respond to emotional impression rather than follow a complete chronology. Larraín has described it as “the story of her last days, a celebration depicted through memories, friends, and, most importantly, her singing.”
Does Angelina Jolie make a convincing Maria Callas?
Jolie is the film’s principal attraction and its central tension. The Associated Press praises the intensity and resolve she brings to Callas, with a theatrical quality that suits the material. Sight and Sound, by contrast, sees a commanding screen presence but finds that Jolie sometimes embodies the idea of the tragic diva more than a fully responsive, particular person.
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#1 Best Overall
Both readings can be true. Jolie’s regal stillness gives the film a compelling center; it also risks making Callas feel like an image to be admired rather than a person whose changing moods and contradictions can be reached. The performance works best when its formality feels like a woman holding herself together. When that restraint dominates, the character can seem sealed off.
How much of the singing is Angelina Jolie?
The opera vocals are a blend, not a single voice throughout. Sight and Sound reports that the singing shifts between Callas’s recordings, Jolie’s voice and combinations of the two. The Guardian says Jolie trained for months and that her singing was multi-tracked and blended with Callas’s recordings. Those accounts do not give a song-by-song breakdown or precise proportions.
Rank #2
The approach makes dramatic sense: the sound can suggest Callas reaching for the instrument that made her famous, while the archival voice carries the weight of the legend. It also makes the performance deliberately difficult to separate into “Jolie” and “Callas.” The film’s effect depends on that overlap, not on presenting Jolie as the sole voice behind every passage.
How do the images and flashbacks shape the film?
Cinematographer Ed Lachman gives the past and present distinct visual textures. In Sight and Sound’s account, Callas’s present-day scenes are in color while memories of her legendary career appear in elegant black and white. The controlled palette and finely worked images help establish a late-life world that feels at once tangible and dreamlike.
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Is Maria a good biopic?
It depends on what you want from a biopic. If you expect a dependable guide to Callas’s life, relationships and artistic development, Maria is intentionally incomplete. The Associated Press sees that choice as prioritizing emotion over “dull facts,” and finds an affecting, theatrical performance in it. Sight and Sound is less persuaded that the fractured form reveals Callas’s vibrant personality.
Rank #4
The disagreement points to the film’s real trade-off: its stylization can turn historical distance into operatic feeling, but it can also preserve that distance. Rather than testing the film against a full chronology, the more useful question is whether its memories, performance and sound create a convincing emotional portrait. At times they do; at others, the film seems more captivated by the legend than curious about the person.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What have critics and viewers said?
At the time of the cited Rotten Tomatoes snapshot in 2026, Maria had a 75% Tomatometer score from 222 reviews and a 76% Popcornmeter score from 50-plus verified ratings. These figures can change and offer only a broad reception signal; they do not explain the divide between critics who respond to the film’s theatrical emotion and those who find its characterization elusive. Rotten Tomatoes also listed Netflix as a viewing option at that access time, but streaming availability varies by location and can change.
Best Value
Who should watch it?
Maria is a stronger fit for viewers drawn to Larraín’s stylized portraits, Jolie’s screen presence and the expressive world of opera than for anyone seeking a straightforward introduction to Callas. If you want a documentary perspective built around archival material and Callas’s own words, Sony Pictures Classics describes Maria by Callas as a documentary telling her life story in her own words. It offers a different route into the singer’s story, rather than a companion that fills in every gap in Larraín’s film.
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