Let's start with the pivotal performance of the title 'character'. Angelina Jolie is almost always exquisite to behold and listen to, especially on the big screen, and while she certainly delivers a prima donna performance here, it is only two thirds Maria Callas AT BEST, and at LEAST a solid one third of just Angelina being herself and using the 'character' of Maria to express her own emotions. Yes, it is an ultimately unwieldy and inconsistent performance, although she does rise to the occasion many times, because while she usually does a highly commendable job of mimicking the idiosyncratic accent and speech patterns of Callas, this is typically only achieved when there are reference points that she can use from interviews and similar footage of the late diva (i.e: Callas being sarcastic, Callas waxing lyrical about opera, etc). When there are no direct video or audio references for Angelina to default to - namely when 'Maria' is very upset or very angry in the film - Angelina merely reverts to her OWN way of getting emotional or 'dramatic'.
There is an angry outburst at an outdoor cafe, for instance, where she actually reverts to her MALEFICENT persona, replete with the British accent that was not at all appropriate for Callas (because while Callas alternated between the American and British pronunciations, she never sounded "English"). Later in the film, there is a rather sad discussion between 'Maria' and her sister, and Angelina seems to forget that she is even PLAYING Callas by the end of that scene as she breaks down into tears and speaks her lines through sobs; we get a good glimpse into the wounded and frightened little girl inside Angelina JOLIE there, but *NOT* the aching child within Maria Callas because Angelina expresses herself entirely in her own manner of speaking and emoting. These are GLARING ERRORS at heightened and climactic moments in the story! There are other moments like that too, although I cannot get into all of them without spoiling the movie.
This is always the danger when it comes to the Modern "Method" of Acting, where the director leaves it entirely up to the star to do what they want to - and in moments of doubt, will instruct the Actor or Actress to have recourse to what Method Acting Teacher Lee Strasberg referred to as 'Emotional Recall' (getting the Actor/Actress to recall emotional experiences from their OWN life and channel THOSE *PERSONAL* EMOTIONS, which of course may not be appropriate at all for the CHARACTER, because the way two people express sadness or anger is naturally going to be very very different). CLASSICAL Acting Techniques are always superior - although almost never used today - because they require the Actor/Actress to use their *IMAGINATION* instead of their own experiences and personal emotions. Angelina Jolie should have IMAGINED how "LA DIVINA" CALLAS would have acted/reacted in those key scenes - even if she didn't have video reference on Youtube. I guess it's a sad state of affairs indeed when even A-list Hollywood Celebrities are unable to use their imaginations, and cannot conjur up any scenario that they cannot pull up on their iPhone.
This is especially a problem in a film like this when Angelina is playing arguably the most famous operatic soprano in history, and yet she "breaks character" and USES HERSELF when the character is at her angriest or saddest or most vulnerable - it's almost as if she was using the most raw scenes in the film to work out her OWN issues and exorcize her PERSONAL demons, rather than conjuring up the demons that were so specific to Callas and the CALLAS temperament!! No actor/actress should use a character for their own THERAPEUTIC or CATHARTIC purposes, especially when the character is a real-life person that is known to so many people (at least the more cultured people in this world).
Mind you, I am not even necessarily the biggest Callas fan - I am much more partial to Nellie Melba and Rosa Ponselle when it comes to Operatic Sopranos - but a lot of the issues in this film also have to do with the SCREENPLAY itself and the way it was shot by the director. Angelina Jolie said in a Q&A that the screenplay wasn't even written when she agreed to play the role, and I must say it is an EXTREMELY SHODDY script. There is so much time wasted that could have been used to reveal more dimensions of Maria - one of the most multi-dimensional artists of any genre in history. Instead, the film is ultimately a VERY REDUCTIVE portrait of Callas, and makes her two-dimensional AT BEST. Even a friend of mine who went to see it with me the 2nd time I was invited to an Advance Screening said that it shows ALMOST NOTHING of the personal joys and personal triumphs of Callas, beyond flashbacks of the audience applauding her at the end of big arias. In the film, Callas says at one point that Happiness never produced a Beautiful Melody and that Music is born of Pain and Tragedy, but this does not jive with what I have heard the real Callas say. The real Callas was insistent that even when a singer uses musical ornaments like Trills to embellish a melody, there were different ways to do a trill depending on the emotion required by the composer (i.e: Fear versus Joy).
Instead, the director seems to think that Opera is SIMPLY TRAGIC and that Callas is a TRAGIC FIGURE like Norma Desmond from 'Sunset Boulevard'. They even introduce a much Younger Leading Man who follows Angelina Jolie around throughout the film, evoking the William Holden/Gloria Swanson May-September dynamic from 'Sunset Boulevard', which struck me as ridiculous and GROSSLY INACCURATE because the REAL Maria Callas was NEVER attracted to younger men. In fact, when Barbara Walters asked her in 1974 - just a few years before she died - whether she thinks she could still meet her Prince Charming, after breaking up with Aristotle Onassis, the real Callas specifically said that AT HER AGE she could not expect 'Prince Charming', but that she hoped to find a good man who could understand her. That COMPLETELY FLIES IN THE FACE of what the director tries to do here - suggesting that Callas was fantasizing about a younger man being enamored of her, just to boost her fading ego.
There are a few sequences that were shot in glorious colour, but are presented in DULL BLACK-AND-WHITE here - presumably to hit the audience over the head with the fact that they are 'flashback' sequences - but when I saw the STILLS in dazzling colour, only to be reminded of how DREARY the Black-and-White 'flashbacks' were (especially the First Meeting between Callas and Onassis), I realized that the director SHOT HIMSELF IN THE FOOT by trying to be too artsy fartsy. Black-and-White simply does not look good or classy in modern times, because for one thing they are shooting with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CAMERAS and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FILTERS than the ones used during the Classic Hollywood Era. What looked artistic, elegant and classy in the 1930s and 1940s can NEVER be recaptured today. There is a reason why those films are 'classics'. This director wants so desperately to make the film a timeless work of art, but it ultimately comes across as disrespectful to Callas herself, while making many of the key creatives involved in the film come across as self-indulgent. Returning to the Black-and-White issue for a moment, the only times when that WOULD have been justified is when they had flashbacks of a TEENAGE MARIA - played by a young actress - although even the historical veracity of those sequences are a bit questionable I would say. But artistically or cinematically speaking, it made no sense to show the Callas and Onassis sequences in black-and-white when Onassis was ultimately the love of Maria's life, like it or not.
They also keep talking about how ugly Aristotle Onassis was, but the footage of the 'real' Onassis that is displayed during the end credits ALONE should remind the viewer that the real man was FAR FROM UGLY. He was a very charismatic, even sexy man - Modern Moviemakers seem to think that any older man who doesn't resemble George Clooney is ugly. I was also APPALLED that they didn't show a SINGLE FLASHBACK of Callas doing Masterclasses at the Juilliard. Those sessions are still available on YouTube in many instances, and the AMOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE she so willingly passed down to younger singers is one of her GREATEST LEGACIES - and yet, this film COMPLETELY IGNORES all of that. Surely, one would think that in her final days, Callas would have DRAWN *SOME* COMFORT from recalling the work she did with the young Juilliard singers.
Last but not least, as an Operatic singer myself, I found it laughable how the filmmakers seemed to have NO UNDERSTANDING of how the Voice actually works. Why even MAKE a film about Opera if they don't bother to learn the basics? It is suggested here that Callas can wake up and sing CASTA DIVA from Bellini's 'Norma' - one of the most difficult coloratura arias ever written for a soprano - FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, without even warming up. Callas wouldn't have been able to do that even in her PRIME YEARS in the late 1940s and 1950s, and yet here she does exactly that in the late 1970s. Sure, it's not meant to sound brilliant in the context of the story, but there is NO WAY Callas would have even ATTEMPTED that. The director also doesn't seem to know that even AFTER warming up - a concept that is never ever even hinted at here - a middle-aged soprano in vocal decline like Callas would NOT sing complicated coloratura arias; in fact, she NEVER sang such arias in the 1970s, and instead stuck to pieces that did NOT require the agility and flexibility of Florid Coloratura. Again, the real Callas categorically told Barbara Walters in 1974 that there was no way she could do then what she did 20 years back.
The film DOES make a great and very compelling conceit out of Maria wanting to SING FOR HERSELF as her life drew to a close, but unfortunately this is lost among the B. S.
