Every artistic medium has a range of masters that define the craft at different points – but generally, there is also a small handful who stand as perhaps the most important, or at the very least more prominent than the vast majority, usually acting as representatives of that particular art form. When it comes to opera, there are few names more iconic and essential to understanding the medium than Maria Callas, who accomplished a level of fame that not many others can claim to have achieved, and which is made even more notable considering she lived a shockingly short life, dying quite prematurely at the age of 53, but having done more in those years than just about any of her contemporaries or artistic descendants. Previously, outside of La Callas’ work, the most prominent text that explored her life was Terrence McNally’s delightful but limited Masterclass, which imagines a fictionalised version of the famed singer delivering lessons to a group of students who are unusually unresponsive to her methods and ideas. It is a solid text, but one that doesn’t even begin to discuss the esteemed soprano’s life and career, especially considering she had quite a tragic demise. Her story has become the subject of Maria, in which Pablo Larraín completes a trilogy of films about tragic 20th-century women who were all important figures known for their lives and deaths, both of which were deeply harrowing but also profoundly fascinating. Set during La Callas’ final few days, the film imagines the famed singer making her way through Paris, visiting some of her old haunts while reminiscing on the past, which takes the form of an interview with the hallucinated manifestation of her medication, which spurs her to take a whistle-stop tour through her past, revisiting various moments in her life that led to this point. A beautiful and poetic ode to one of the most important performers of her generation, handcrafted by a director whose interest in exploring the lives of these women who have attained almost folkloric status, but were very rarely given the respect that they perhaps deserved in terms of having their inner lives explored and questioned, something that Maria (much like Jackie and Spencer) achieves with incredible poignancy and delicate attention to detail.

Larraín has always had a particular affinity for telling stories about individuals and their environments – many of his films are as much about the particular individuals as they are about the cities in which they live. There’s something quite poetic about a film that creates a relationship between an individual and their surroundings since no one can exist exclusively on their own and instead has to rely on the circumstances around them to survive, while the same can be the cause of their eventual downfall. In the case of Maria, the focus is on exploring her life through the people who led her to that point, for better or worse. Most of the film is either structured around this imagined interview that takes place as she wanders around Paris, or in her luxurious but lonely apartment where she is kept company by her dedicated butler and housemaid, who are less servants and more valued confidantes (or perhaps even surrogate parents) to a woman who is psychologically unstable and emotionally drained, but yet persists in her belief that she is not only at her peak, but has the capacity for a “third act”, when in reality the audience (and likely those around her within this film) knows that her time is much more limited than she believes it to be, which is the central tragedy that drives this film. La Callas was someone who earnestly believed that she would make a triumphant return to the stage, even when it was clear that it would take too much of a toll on her, both physically and emotionally, to return. The film depicts how she became so enveloped in her craft, that her own sanity began to suffer as a result, and like many tortured artists who allow themselves to become secondary to their craft, La Callas was so firmly dedicated to her art and the pursuit of perfection (which she remarks is impossible to achieve, and also redundant – perfection in art is counterintuitive to all the elements that make it important), which ultimately was one of the reasons behind her untimely death. Leaping between timelines, Maria pieces together its subject’s memories to create a vibrant mosaic of her life, covering her various metaphysical journeys that made her such an enigmatic, and ultimately tragic, figure.

Over the past two decades, Larraín has emerged as someone who has grown from a rambunctious young Chilean director to a filmmaker whose films become the envy of the industry, solely because he has an exceptional track record in extracting the best work from his actors, who in turn are provoked and challenged to deliver performances that redefine their grasp on the craft, and often allow them to be seen in a radically different light due to the strength of these challenging collaborations. Physical resemblance or cultural background bears very little relevance, since the strength of the subject matter and the precise manner in which the director works with his actors compensate for these elements, with the focus being more on creating a vivid portrait of the individual and their journey. It is Angelina Jolie who is selected to portray La Callas, and it is not hyperbole to say that this is perhaps her best performance in well over two decades, especially since it features her taking on a more challenging role that both allows her to exercise skills that have become somewhat dormant as she has shifted away from acting and has focused instead on directing for the most part, as well as playing on aspects of the subject’s life that Jolie herself can relate to – the idea of being a woman in the industry through which absolutely everything is subjected to the most ruthless scrutiny, to the point where they have to step away from the spotlight for their sanity, is something that resonates with her as an actor, based on her contentious relationship with both the media and the industry as a whole. Jolie is incredible in this role – she is wholeheartedly believable, bringing the elegance and grandeur that always lingers in absolutely every discussion on La Callas, but also a vulnerability that is even more impactful, since this is not supposed to be a mindless celebration of her legacy, but rather an intimate look at her life and the challenges she endured. We barely even notice the exceptional work being done by the likes of Alba Rohrwatch and Pierfransisco Favino, both of whom are wonderful, but ultimately secondary to Jolie’s astonishing, complex portrayal of this extraordinary woman.

Beyond the towering performance delivered by Jolie, we find that Larraín is prioritizing simplicity over anything else when crafting this film. Part of this is due to the exceptional acting, but also shows that he is not interested in the traditional cradle-to-grave structure, but also defies the more common trend to set an entire film on a particular period of a subject’s life, which is also growing quite stale and predictable, especially since there isn’t much room for detail in these instances. He finds the balance between the two, structuring the core plot of Maria on a single day, which also happens to be her final one, and then interspersing it with scenes that take the form of her memories, scattering moments from her childhood, early adulthood and the peak of her fame, to weave a complex portrait of her life. It’s an approach that seems simple in theory but has so many intricate layers that we discover as we work our way through the story. It is certainly more observational than it is factual, creating imagined conversations and tinkering with reality to create what they imagine La Callas would have felt in those final days, as she reflects on the past and attempts to atone for the mistakes she has made along the way. It’s quite an esoteric film, with the tone being distant and quite harrowing, but never abrasive in a way that feels as if it is losing compassion or sincerity. Authenticity is not a priority for the director, who chooses to embrace ideas that are seemingly much more steeped in the psychological than they are the historical (the film doesn’t contradict the facts, but rather presents them in a much more complex, subversive manner), which culminates in a film that is far more driven by the atmosphere than it is the details. Maria consistently avoids becoming too overwrought – the moments of emotion are moving precisely because they’re peppered throughout a film that sometimes feels quite cold, an intentional choice done to play into the feeling that we are voyeurs peering into the final day in the life of this woman who was one of the many people who made history while they were alive, but only achieved the abundance of the praise they deserved upon their demise, a meaningful but challenging approach to exploring her life and legacy.

There is an argument to be made that Maria is another example of Larraín prioritizing style over substance – but even those who find a lot of value in this film can understand the implicit reasons as to why this is the case, especially since it becomes clear that it isn’t a case of the narrative not be sufficient, but rather that it is more of an experimental work in which the form is used as the primary vessel of delivering this poignant story, rather than following preconceived patterns that may be more traditional, but lack any discernible character outside of simply exploring the same general concepts that we’ve seen countless times in the past, choosing to look at the subject through a much more engaging, somewhat offbeat lens, which lends it a much more engaging tone and allows for far more detail to emerge when looking at her final days. Instead, he chooses to focus on creating a hauntingly beautiful portrait of a woman who has endured many challenges in her life, and while she may not have known that her days were coming to an end, she still engages in the act of reflecting on the journey she has taken, which forms the foundation for a truly astonishing, deeply moving examination of the human condition, as seen through the eyes of someone who witnessed both the glory and cruelty of fame and the pursuit of perfection. Featuring career-best work from its lead, who captures every nuance and detail of this extraordinary woman, and is driven by deep compassion and willingness to plumb the emotional depths of its subject’s life, Maria is an extraordinary work – poetic and moving, but also raw and sometimes quite brutal when it is required, it’s a staggering achievement that feels like it has been handcrafted by someone whose affection for the subject collides with his unique artistic ambitions, creating something truly poignant and disquieting, but also achingly beautiful, becoming both the powerful statement on the nature of art and vivid ode that Maria Callas deserves.