At the height of her fame, when Maria Callas lived in New York and would-be opera singers lied, cheated, begged, stole or inflated their rent to gain access to one of her music lessons, she was the greatest soprano of the ’20sTh Century would close every class promptly at 5 p.m. It didn’t matter if you were in the middle of a difficult aria that you had been working on for weeks. Class ended and the door slammed as the clock struck five, allowing Diva Divina, as Callas was known, to rush home in time to watch the reruns I love Lucy.

Little unknown facts like this would have made it Maria¸the lushly visual but dramatically listless biopic of her life from Chilean director Pablo Larraín is a more insightful and entertaining film. Mr. Larrain did the same job on two previous bloated biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana, and it was left to Natalie Portman Jackie and Kristen Stewart in Spencer bringing their characters to life where the scripts failed them. Now it’s Angelica Jolie’s turn. She works hard to reveal the beauty and magnificence that made Callas world famous and even tries to copy that famous voice in some vocal sections. (An impossible task, to be sure, which is why Callas sings herself the whole time. Be grateful for small, or in this case extremely dynamic, acts of kindness.) All three films consist of the same elements – misery in life and a sad, wistful longing for the past . They are all fragments of the same woman – sad, neurotic icons who climbed to the top of the ladder and found themselves missing. All three had so much more to offer that I personally find this trio lacking in outline.

In Maria, What we already know from her turbulent life and talent should have guaranteed a saga full of passion, but the plot doesn’t exist. The film begins and ends with Maria’s death on the floor of her palatial Paris apartment in September 1977, when she died at just 53 years old. What fills the two hours in between are the last days of her tortured final week, in which she wanders the empty rooms in panic and fear – her once brilliant voice was gone, her Mondrian eyes were but ghosts of her former expressiveness, she was addicted to prescription drugs, ignored the ringing phone and talked unconvincingly about a comeback. The excuse for devoting more than two hours of luxury and time to such an unhappy, unfulfilled woman is simply an interview with a reporter from a television show called Mandrax, the name of the pills she takes that contribute to her eventual death. (Speaking of pretentious symbolism!)

To make up for the film’s fundamental lethargy, it has to be said that there is always a lot to see. The visuals are magnificent – from Ed Lachman’s sumptuous cinematography to lavish sets by Guy Hendrix Dyas and fantastic costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini, each contributor is an invaluable artist. Each element helps distract from the dross that Steven Knight’s script forces Ms. Jolie to say. A disturbing combination of tortured self-doubt and insurmountable narcissism, she actually says to a waiter taking her order, “I’m not hungry. I come to restaurants to be worshiped.” There is little mention of her cold, loveless marriage or her mysterious role as the mistress of Aristotle Onassis, who left her for Jacqueline Kennedy. Her best friends, only confidants and only reliable companions were her faithful maid Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) and the strict, fatherly, adoring butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), both excellent.

There is a lot of excitement in the air and in the gossip columns about Angelina Jolie’s narrow Oscar nomination, which she absolutely deserves, but she has proven it many times Opportunities to be a more careful director than Pablo Larrain. It’s a shame she didn’t direct this film so well underlines it with its beauty. Mary is not terrible Movie, just a big disappointment.