Songs from the Specious Floor: Larrain Imagines the Last Days of a Diva
A penny for the thoughts of Maria Callas regarding Pablo Larraín’s glossy recuperation of her last week of life in Maria, the third in a series of high profile biopics of iconic women following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer. Scripted by Steven Knight and lensed by Ed Lachman, the end result is a beautiful photo shoot for Angelina Jolie as a superficial approximation of the notoriously difficult diva, long considered by many to be the best opera singer whoever lived. Set during the last week of her life, it’s an elegiac reflection of a life told in various flashbacks as Callas slips into a sort of madness whilst suffering from impending heart and liver failure (which, of course, is not quite rightly reflected in the glamorous comportment of Jolie).… Read the rest
