What Is ‘Maria’ About?
The film focuses on the final week of the legendary soprano’s life.
She hasn’t eaten in days.
Image via StudioCanal
She’s popping pills.
She erratically hides them in her coat pockets to shield them from the eyes of her domestic staff.
She skips her doctor’s appointments.
Image via Netflix
She wanders around Paris in a daze.
She hasn’t performed in over four years, but she is secretly rehearsing.
Of course,that all sounds terribly tedious without things getting messy.
Image via Netflix
Through flashbacks, we get to bear witness to the really salacious stuff instead!
Young Maria (Aggelina Papadopoulou) has to entertain Nazi soldiers!
Yes, that Aristotle Onassis.
She says she’s finally free and does whatever she feels like.
Unfortunately, in this world, characters also seem like furniture.
They exist, or maybe not, depending on whether they serve the mise en scene.
Cut to reality – it’s not raining at all.
Does this actually signify anything or is it just visually pleasing?
The film’s stately artfulness hardly conceals the tawdry nature of the screenplay bySteven Knight, who also wroteSpencer.
In other scenes, she is consistently one note.
She is supposed to play a diva, but that larger-than-life aura doesn’t come across.
In most scenes, the characters, even the imaginary ones, barely exhibit any emotion when conversing.
It’s supposed to be an outlet for all the repressed emotions simmering beneath other scenes.
It’s an unbearable burden to keep up appearances in the public eye, I get it.
But does this point need to be made again and again?
Instead, here we essentially have two hours of a once-was feeling sorry for herself.
Mariais now streaming on Netflix.
