Angelina Jolie has an actual knack for portraying actual folks. Jolie’s greatest films equivalent to Lady, Interrupted, Gia, and Changeling drew the eyes of critics and audiences, receiving a number of nominations and accolades. Jolie’s 2024 Netflix film Maria appears to be held in excessive regard earlier than its streaming launch with director Barry Jenkins evaluating it to Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X. With a praise like that, I’m much more pumped so as to add the upcoming biopic to my watchlist.
There’s simply one thing about watching a Netflix biopic that’s so epic. Whether or not it’s the catchy musical biopic Tick, Tick…Increase! or the Barack and Michelle Obama-produced movie Rustin, the streaming service honors these real-life people by showcasing the extraordinary lives they lived. Angelina Jolie’s Maria doesn’t appear too far off from Netflix’s wonderful biopic streak portraying the ultimate years of opera singer Maria Callas’ life.
At a post-screen AFI Fest dialog moderated by Barry Jenkins (through IndieWire), the American filmmaker informed Jolie he cherished her film a lot that he in contrast it to a Denzel Washington basic. Now, that makes me need to see the upcoming music biopic much more:
The efficiency is so placing. It’s nearly like, to me, Jesse Eisenberg is Mark Zuckerberg. Denzel Washington is Malcolm X, in a sure approach. And I feel you’re Maria Callas in the identical approach. On this film, in so many moments, you’re performing along with your complete physique.
Barry Jenkins makes a wonderful level in that somebody is gifted after they lose themselves of their roles. You not see the actor however the real-life particular person they’re portraying.
That’s the way it felt once I first noticed the wonderful must-watch biopic Malcolm X the place I felt like I used to be seeing the human rights activist proper earlier than me. I noticed Denzel Washington put power, charisma, and emotional vary that made Malcolm X relatable for audiences. It felt the identical for me seeing David Oyelowo enjoying Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma the place it was just like the American minister got here again to life on the large display screen. If Angelina Jolie did the identical factor for Maria Callas and informed her story with justice, this makes me all of the extra excited to study concerning the closing years of the famed opera singer.
Angelina Jolie has executed a wonderful job absorbing the real-life roles of Lisa Rowe in Lady, Interrupted the place she received her first Oscar, and Christine Collins in Changeling in search of her lacking son. It seems to be like for Jolie’s subsequent biopic, she actually devoted herself to her new position and defined what her secret was to completely immersing herself as Maria Callas:
I didn’t know the right way to method this, and so I listened to her. Maria taught performing, she taught opera, she taught voice. There are such a lot of tapes of her, and he or she stated her course of…she calls it straitjacketing. You take heed to the piece from the composer as meant, precisely as meant, and also you don’t put your emotion in it, your ideas, your something. You simply have the self-discipline of studying it with the sound, the pitch, the breath, Italian, the phrases, the whole lot with that self-discipline. That was the important thing to her and who she was. Then, solely within the closing hour do you carry your emotional self, and by that time, you’re so locked in technically that you may now give the area on your full emotional self and your physique, and it really works collectively. I don’t know if I ever understood that totally as an artist till I realized that from her.
With the teachings of Maria Callas serving to Angelina Jolie as an artist painting her, it is an attractive factor for one legendary performer to channel the soul of one other. I wouldn’t be stunned if Angelina Jolie was to obtain one other Oscar nomination for Maria. To date, critics have been calling her efficiency “career-defining” with one evaluation even saying she was “deliberate in each breath and syllable.” With The Vacationer actress speaking concerning the exact course of she took to immerse herself within the Greek soprano singer, I’m assured we’ll see her title among the many record of nominees.
After Barry Jenkins informed Angelina Jolie her efficiency was simply as sturdy as Denzel Washington’s in Malcolm X, now I really want to see for myself how the gifted actress brings her A-game to the brand new biopic. Coming to your streaming schedule, Jolie will mild up the grand opera stage and your Netflix subscription on November twenty seventh.