Jolie's Standing Ovation for Maria Biopic

Angelina Jolie's joyful demeanor on her way home  from the Venice Film Festival was not unexpected,   given the enthusiastic welcome she  received for her role in the biopic Maria. The 49-year-old actress, who won accolades from  critics for her role in Pablo Larraín's film,   decided not to attend any more events in the  city as she got ready to depart Italy on Friday. As she boarded a water taxi, Angelina  flaunted her sophisticated sense of   fashion by dressing in a short-sleeved  trench coat over loose white slacks. The previous evening, the actor made a  stunning appearance at Maria's premiere,   which resulted in an eight-minute  standing ovation for the movie. It was met with a response  similar to Brendan Fraser's   after his Oscar-winning performance in  The Whale, his comeback performance. Following the response, Angelina  became noticeably upset,   wiping away tears and averting  her face from the applause. Several admirers announced following the  film's debut that it had ignited Angelina   Jolie's quest to win her second  Academy Award in 2025, precisely   25 years after she won the Supporting  Actress Oscar for Girl, Interrupted. Posts on X stated things like, "It  seems like there will be a race for   best actress at the Oscars between  Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie;" I'm very sorry for Soairse Ronan and  Amy Adams, but Angelina Jolie will   win the Oscar. Perhaps now isn't the best  moment for them to share an Oscar together; "This is the start of the  Angelina Jolie Oscar campaign." The biopic shows Maria in the last week of  her life, just before her death in 1977,   at the time when she was acclaimed as  the greatest opera singer in history. She was renowned not only for her amazing voice,   which elevated her to the status of one of the  greatest opera singers of the 20th century,   but also for her stunning good looks, which  highlighted her numerous romantic relationships. Throughout her final years, Maria  struggled with her health, and the   movie highlights her declining mental state  as she fantasizes of maybe performing again,   putting her marriage to Ari  Onassis front and center. Although the movie has had a favorable  welcome, reviews have been more divided,   with many complimenting Angelina's performance. Despite calling her role a "whining, self-pitying,   endlessly needy victim," he remarked, Jolie  provides one of her best performances to date. Although she appears to have trained for seven  months before being prepared to perform in   public for the first time, she is utterly  believable in the role and even performs   some of her own warbling in addition to some  excellent lip-synching to the real Callas.   "This may be a flawed depiction of Callas,   but not by her." I'm not an expert, but I  was unable to distinguish between the two. As he gave the movie two stars and said, "This  is a film fed by, and consistently cutting to,   the operas that defined its subject,"  Kevin Maher concurred. However,   hardly a single scene is operatic in terms  of emotion. It is clumsily, willfully flat. Nicholas Barber of the BBC gave  the movie three stars, saying,   "It's also too adoring and reverential to let us  sympathize with its supposedly fragile heroine." 'Unusually for a drug-addled, terminally  ill person, Jolie's Callas never fails   to look stunning, and she consistently  exudes a sense of dignity, composure,   and confidence, surpassing everyone in her path.' With a rating of four stars, Robbie  Collin of The Telegraph wrote,   "Jolie is given ample space to  dazzle, but less to surprise." However, she dazzles with  her deft grasp of how camp   to go without making things too  dramatic for their own benefit. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair stated  that the movie "struggles to hit the   high notes," despite Angelina's performance. "If a few details were taken out,  Maria could be any grand diva—this   hazy image of a woman swanning through  her last week of life," he remarked. Stephanie Bunbury, a journalist for Deadline,   called Angelina "an almost  magical match for the real diva." She stated, "The actor's dedication to  this creation is evident at every turn.   She learned to sing for the role knowing  that Callas was only happy when on stage;   the voice we hear is a blend  of Callas and Jolie's own." Xan Brooks, a critic for The Guardian,  gave the movie four stars and stated,   "I was prepared to categorize this  as a pretentious diversion that   would eventually become a high-class  memento halfway through." However,   it conquered me, won me over, and by the end  credits—God help us—I was praying for more. 'It's a career-defining bit of  synchronicity, supported by one of   Jolie's very best performances,' wrote  Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent,   complimenting Angelina's performance  writing even more. Her work has always   focused on having a flawless sense  of control over tone and posture. Angelina "seizes our attention, playing  Maria as a woman of wiles who is imperious,   mysterious, fusing the life force  of a genius diva with the downbeat   emotional fire of a femme fatale,"  according to Variety's Owen Gleiberman. "Jolie reminds you that she can be  a deadly serious actor of commanding   subtlety and power for the first time in years." For her part in the movie, Angelina trained as a  singer for seven months; she played Maria Callas   at the same moment when the singer was on  the verge of death and losing her voice. According to the producers, they  combined Angelina's and Callas' voices. She described her anxiety of performing  in front of an audience, saying,   "Everyone here knows I was terribly nervous  about the singing." I trained for about seven   months because you can't do anything halfway  when working with (director) Pablo Larrain. He makes the most amazing demands that you  actually put in the effort, learn, and practice. "Because my sons were there and helped  to block the door so that no one else   could enter, I was really nervous  when I sang for the first time." And I felt uneasy. Pablo was decent enough to  put me in a tiny room and take me all the way   to La Scala. He therefore gave me time to  develop. I had never performed in public,   so I was afraid I wouldn't measure up to her. The movie, according to Pablo Larrain,  is a celebration of Callas' life. Jolie   expressed her wish that the singer realized  how loved she was towards the end of her life. Hailed as the greatest voice in opera history,   Callas died in 1977 at the young age of 53  following a period of poor health and seclusion. After her husband Ari Onassis  left her for Jackie Kennedy,   the widow of JFK, she had been devastated. Angelina has portrayed well-known figures on  screen before: in the 1998 film Gia, she played   the tragic supermodel Gia Carangi, and in the 2007  film A Mighty Heart, she played Mariana Pearl. The director, most known for her biopics Jackie  (starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy) and   Spencer (starring Kristen Stewart as Princess  Diana), said: "It has been a long-awaited dream   to be able to combine my two most intense  and personal passions, opera and cinema." "Working with Angelina, an incredibly  courageous and inquisitive artist, is   an incredible opportunity." An authentic blessing. Steven Knight wrote Maria before  the Hollywood WGA strike and was   given a SAG-AFTRA temporary agreement. Callas was born in 1923 and died  in 1977. She received her training   in Greece and Italy after being  born in America to Greek parents. She was renowned not only for her amazing voice,   which elevated her to the status of one of the  greatest opera singers of the 20th century,   but also for her stunning good looks, which  highlighted her numerous romantic relationships.