Maria is a stunning biographical drama directed by Pablo Larraín, completing his trilogy of films about iconic women of the twentieth century following Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021). Angelina Jolie delivers a career-defining performance as Maria Callas, the legendary Greek-American soprano widely regarded as the greatest opera singer of the modern era. Set in the final days of Callas's life in Paris in 1977, the film blurs the lines between memory, delusion, and performance as Maria attempts to recapture her voice and confront the full arc of her extraordinary and painful existence.

Larraín's approach is characteristically bold and non-literal. Rather than a conventional biopic chronicling Callas's life from beginning to end, Maria plunges us into the turbulent interiority of its subject, staging her memories and fantasies with operatic grandeur. The film's visual language is ravishing — saturated colors, grand Parisian interiors, and sequences of live performance — yet always in service of understanding a woman who gave everything to her art and paid an enormous personal cost. Jolie's performance is the film's beating heart, requiring her to embody one of classical music's most demanding vocal traditions while portraying profound loneliness and complex self-reckoning.

Maria is not simply a film for opera lovers or fans of classic Hollywood glamour, though it will delight both. It is a meditation on what it means to dedicate a life to art, on the relationship between a performer and her audience, and on the often devastating trade-offs that genius demands. Like Callas herself, the film is flawed, excessive, passionate, and unforgettable — a work of genuine cinematic ambition that stays with the viewer long after the credits roll.