Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight, has compared Angelina Jolie’s performance in the upcoming musical biopic Maria to Denzel Washington‘s classic turn in 1992 drama Malcolm X.
The high praise came during a Q&A on October 26 at The AFI Fest in Los Angeles with members of the cast and crew including Jolie and director Pablo Larraín. Jenkins, who was moderating the conversation, remarked on how transformative he found Jolie’s performance as Maria Callas, the world-famous opera singer. As well as Washington’s performance, he compared her to Jesse Eisenberg in 2010 drama The Social Network.
“The performance is so striking,” he said to Jolie, as reported by IndieWire. “It’s almost like, to me, Jesse Eisenberg is Mark Zuckerberg. Denzel Washington is Malcolm X, in a certain way. And I think you are Maria Callas in the same way. In this movie, in so many moments, you are performing with your whole body.”
Holding its premiere in August at Venice Film Festival, Maria is the third part of Larraín’s thematic trilogy about powerful women. After dramatising the life of former US First Lady Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie, and Princess Diana in 2021’s Spencer, Maria tells the story of Callas in her final years during the 1970s, haunted by the past as she secludes herself in her Paris apartment. The Power of The Dog star Kodi Smit-McPhee also appears as one of Callas’ hallucinations.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the film received an eight-minute ovation in Venice, with Maria being seen as a possible second Oscar win for Jolie, 25 years after she won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Girl, Interrupted. Jolie dedicated a lot of time to preparing for the role, with Larraín revealing she trained for over seven months to perfect Callas’ posture and voice.
Maria is released on Netflix in the US on December 11. Jenkins’ next project to hit cinemas will be Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 remake of The Lion King which sees Beyonce and Donald Glover both reprising their roles from the first film.