Maria (2024) Film review for the “Philadelphia Film Festival”: Angelina Jolie gives the best performance of her career in her immersive musician biography

“Maria” is the third part of director Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy about iconic women of the 20th century at a particular time when they disappeared from the public eye. 2016’s “Jackie” examined the role Jackie Kennedy played after her husband’s assassination, and “Spencer” examined the life of Diana Spencer before her official divorce from the future King Charles of England. To say that “Maria” is the least comprehensive part of this trilogy is not an insult, but rather a conscious decision on Larraín’s part. This is not the story of how a nation’s consciousness was placed on the shoulders of a young woman, but rather a deconstruction of the artifice of celebrity.

In “Maria” Angelina Jolie plays the role of Maria Callas, the world-famous opera singer who achieved such fame that even those unfamiliar with the “bel canto” technique could recognize…