To me, it’s a difficult journey watching a Pablo Larrain film, whether it is “Neruda” or “Jackie.” And watching “Maria” with Angelina Jolie was no different. I have read the very honest and heartfelt reviews on this film from professional singers and am reminded again that we are all perhaps as fragile as Callas in her last days.

Larrain is a filmmaker who likes his trilogies and this film follows suit after “Jackie” and “Spencer” where he lays out a canvas of empathy for his heroines…but not without the burden of darkest friction. Two qualities that can create great art and indelible performances as performers know. But it strikes me that it is the emptiness of legends that Larrain seems to have the most profound relationship with. In “Maria” perhaps he has found his most successful subject. Her life was laid waste in the latter years with her desperation of living in loneliness. And to me, that is the centerpiece of this picture. Loneliness.

It is the loneliness that performers understand when they are divided from their artistry. And the inability to be free…to “Let the music go!” as Callas’s sister said to her in one of the movie’s most remarkable scenes.

On my radio show on the arts, I wrote a review of “Spencer” after its release. I felt then and still feel now that Larrain’s view of Princess Diana was misguided. I feel that when society projects their adoration upon a character, whether it be Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, these loving and misunderstood women will perish, as they did, under the pressure of our expectations. The Goddess will die.

In “Maria” Larrain and his screen writer, Steven Knight present their “opera” knowing that the destructive pressure here is from Callas herself. It is a “Sunset Blvd” moment. Angelina Jolie’s performance is superb. I thought the strongest moments were in her loneliness and drug induced surreal performance worlds, the Madama Butterfly scene standing out in my mind. What performer of a certain age hasn’t experienced that kind of dream recollection looking back, desiring to have the overwhelming power reclaimed?

The film is so filled with these moments that we, the audience, are now the target of projection. The tables are turned and we join her in her surreal existence as equal partners, wounded and lost. As Steven Knight penned, “There’s no beautiful melody made out of happiness.”

Pamela Kuhn