Barely scratching the surface: Pablo Larraín and his controversial trilogy
After the release of Maria, Pablo Larraín completed his long-lasting trilogy of historical female figures that began with Jackie in 2016. The film was a heightened portrait of one period in Jacqueline Kennedy’s life in the aftermath of her husband’s assassination, with Natalie Portman playing the First Lady as she endures not only one of the most emotionally fraught times of her life but of American history. After this, Larraín established his fascination with the line between authenticity and performance and the tension between true life and creating a legacy, with his 2021 film Spencer expanding on these ideas by exploring the life of Princess Diana.
The film was similar to Jackie, both in structure and tone, with the story taking place over the winter holidays as Diana grapples with her imminent divorce. However, with the final instalment to this trilogy being released this year, with Larraín creating a surrealist portrait of the final days of Maria Callas’ life, it has opened up an interesting conversation about the underlying messaging and Larraín’s effectiveness in depicting the inner world of these complex women. While some people have praised his visual style and depiction of loneliness, others have critiqued his lack of nuance and ability to portray these women as three-dimensional people, raising a wider conversation about female pain and its portrayal in the media.
Maria takes place during the final week of the infamous opera singer’s life, sharing her experiences with a journalist as she attempts to reclaim her voice and rediscover her passion for her own enjoyment. It also touches on similar ideas from the last two films in Larraín’s trilogy, looking at her perception of herself becomes inseparable from how the public views her, losing her sense of agency as she lives according to the expectations placed on her by other people as a woman in the public eye. She struggles between wanting to lean into the validation that this offers her, with her entire sense of self-worth coming from the praise she received when singing, despite knowing that she was never truly doing this for herself. She ultimately lost her voice by giving it away to everyone else, becoming absorbed by her constant performance until there was nothing left to give.
While all films in the ‘troubled women’ trilogy are visually beautiful and very engrossing, working to wrap you up completely in their world and immerse you in their perspective, this does not necessarily complete a full portrait of their true selves and inner worlds. Larraín is successful in creating a vivid reflection of their loneliness, with long and haunting shots that follow them as they walk from room to room and gaze sadly out of windows. It makes their worlds feel repressive and limiting, with few people to talk to who truly understand them.
As well as this, Larraín often chooses a very heightened and slightly dramatic dialogue style to capture the individual personalities of the women in his films, creating a stilted style in the case of Spencer and something more cryptic and surrealist in Maria, with the singer often talking in riddles and showing a reluctance to be honest.
While this creates a distinct mood piece and a visceral portrait of their suffocating worlds, it does not offer much to show us who these women truly are. In the case of Spencer, we know that Princess Diana was a very complicated woman—someone who was lighthearted, deeply sad, generous, and secretive. But Larraín’s depiction of her only hones in on her sadness, coming across as a slightly one-note figure who is consumed by her pain and unable to express anything else, with her spirit and personality becoming lost entirely. While I found Jackie to be slightly more nuanced, it also focuses on her pain and the trauma of losing her husband, slightly veering into the same territory.
Maria is a film that I very much enjoyed despite feeling a little unfulfilled by its presentation of the singer, leaving the cinema with little understanding of who she truly was. While this is partly the point of the film, with her authenticity being corrupted by the men who tried to quieten her voice, it did feel a little reductive to focus on her ex-husband and his role in her sorrows without delving more into the other parts of her history that added to the overall tapestry of her life.
While very beautiful and captivating, there is a reductive sadness in Larraín’s work that feels slightly hollow and insulting. To say that these women are defined by their tragedies is a very one-note way of looking at a person’s life, especially given the slightly sick fascination that Hollywood has with exploiting female pain and using it for entertainment. While Larraín might be genuinely fascinated by these women, the writing in his films makes no real effort to explore anything but their sadness, defining them by these experiences and forgetting the multitudes that are contained outside of this.
Painting them as enigmatic and deeply misunderstood people barely scratches the surface of who they were and only adds to the misconceptions around their legacies by allowing them to remain as mysteries, portraying the public caricatures of these women. There is no doubt that Larraín is good at depicting loneliness, which is something that all of these women experienced in spades, but there is so much more to them than the loneliness caused by their pain, and I cannot help but feel disappointed by the distant versions of these films that could present them as so much more.
