Ed Lachman ASC on "Maria"

With "Maria," cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC, reunites with director Pablo Larraín to bring another complex historical figure to life. Following their striking black-and-white visuals in Netflix's "El Conde" (2023), "Maria" marks their latest collaboration--this time, completing Larraín's trilogy of films exploring the inner lives of iconic women, alongside "Jackie" (2016) and "Spencer" (2021). This latest production, starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, has already been hailed as some of Lachman's finest-ever work.

For Larraín, "Maria" was elevated as a passion project by his deep love and knowledge of opera. When he first approached Lachman about shooting it, the cinematographer wondered if someone equally knowledgeable on the subject might be better suited to the task. He recalls, "Eventually, Pablo called me once they had started preproduction to say that he really wanted me on board, so of course I agreed. He said a very interesting thing to me, which was that opera is similar to cinema in terms of the experience and how you approach it. I found that to be true; opera is not a representation of reality, but an emotional interpretation and a heightened reality."

This insight immediately influenced Lachman's visual approach to the project. He explains, "Maria Callas said that the stage was her mind and opera was her soul. In fact, her life was so close to opera that it can almost be thought of as an opera, defined by operatic themes like betrayal, unrequited love, and loss. Her ultimate strength to survive was through her music, until the end. So, the film became, for me, an opera about Maria Callas rather than just a biopic. Understanding opera as a way of entering a state of expressionistic, heightened reality brought forth ideas about images that would tell the story of her life."

Steven Knight's screenplay is a kaleidoscopic collage of scenes set during the week preceding Callas's death in 1977, flashbacks, and hallucinations, to each of which Lachman assigned a specific look. The presence of a reputable film lab in Budapest, where the production was based, made analog capture a realistic option. "I still like shooting on film, even though it gets more and more difficult to use," says Lachman. "Our film stock had to be ordered and driven in from London every week, and the dailies workflow is more protracted, but film has a unique grain structure, with finer grain in the highlights and larger grain at the lower end. For me, the way grain moves within the frame is almost anthropomorphic, which doesn't happen digitally. I love the feeling with film that the grain is giving life to the image."

For scenes set in 1977, Lachman chose ARRICAM ST 35 mm cameras fitted with 3-perf movements, shooting on Kodak 50D (5203), 250D (5207), and 500T (5219) color negative. Flashbacks were also shot with the ARRICAMs, but on Double-X (5222) black-and-white negative. Scenes in which Callas imagines herself being interviewed by a TV crew were shot on Super 16 with an ARRIFLEX 416, using 250D (7207) and 500T (7219) color negative. He recalls, "I discussed with Pablo what 16 mm camera we'd actually see with the TV crew, and in the end we chose an Aaton LTR because that's what they would have used in the late 1970s in Paris, but we actually shot with the ARRIFLEX 416 and Cooke zooms: a T2.8/10.4-52 mm and the rare T1.6/10-30 mm."

To capture intimate moments with those closest to Callas, and to convey a sense of how photographed she was in her lifetime, Lachman used Super 8 and Standard 16 mm cameras. This created a home movie feel, accentuated by over-scanning the Super 8 film in post to make the sprocket hole--and parts of the frames above and below--visible on screen. Lachman says, "There is a lot of real Super 8 footage of Callas; we felt that this could be another element to enrich the visuals and show her without her guard up. It contrasted with the black-and-white 35 mm material that showed how mannered and made-up she was when presenting herself publicly, and when photographed by people like Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn."

Lachman returned to the lenses he used on "El Conde" for the 35 mm sections of "Maria," a lens set he refers to as Ultra Baltars. Constructed by Zero Optik in LA, they are mainly rehoused 1930s Bausch and Lomb Baltars, supplemented at the wide end with matched glass. "The original Baltars have a very simple optical design," says Lachman. "There are only about six elements and a single lens coating. We loved that they gave the feeling of how films were shot in the time period we were covering--films like "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Touch of Evil." Initially, we only intended to use them for the black-and-white scenes, but after testing we decided to shoot the color sections with them as well."

For much of the shoot, and across all the various camera formats, director Pablo Larraín also served as camera operator. Lachman explains, "Pablo loves operating and he's very good with the wheels. I always say that images have a rhythm the way music has a rhythm, and because Pablo knew opera so well, I thought it was a good marriage to have him behind the camera. His intimacy with the music enhanced the rhythm of the images. As director he also had the relationship with Angelina Jolie, so I felt that having him directly respond to her performance with the camera could work." 

Beyond the collage of camera formats, Lachman describes two further aspects of his cinematography that help give the audience an emotional experience of Callas's interior world. "Her life was like an opera, so I wanted to give people an experience like viewing an opera," he says. "Often we had the camera on a 15-foot or 40-foot Technocrane and it's like a moving proscenium, a moving stage that follows her or shows her point of view. For me, that's the way you see an opera because you can select what you want to focus on when you're looking at a stage."

The other aspect Lachman cites is color. He says, "Since the use of color in opera is mannered and expressionistic rather than representational, I felt I could do the same in Maria's environment--even in her private chamber. I could play with what I called expressionistic naturalism, collaborating with production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas to make the sets look almost theatrical so that every part of her life is heightened. I think of color as having a psychological impact and painters have always known how color affects people emotionally. For example, I used the color green at various places in Maria's apartment, because green for me felt like an intrusion into her privacy."

Modern LED lighting fixtures helped Lachman play with colors in this way. He explains, "I was fortunate that ARRI Rental in Budapest were able to get hold of the latest SkyPanel X lights from ARRI in Munich. There was a courtyard behind the apartment building and I used the SkyPanel X fixtures back there because I could instantly change the color temperature of the light coming into the building. For the interiors I couldn't really use lights on stands because we were generally shooting wide, between 21 mm and 28 mm, so I had China balls above the chandeliers."

For Lachman, the creative use of color was another advantage of shooting on film. He notes, "Film feels more like the way oil paint responds when you use warm and cool colors together, let's say cool daylight coming through a window into the warm environment of her apartment. There's a mixture between the blue and the warmth where green enters, so film gives me more image depth through the color, whereas on digital you have the cool color and the warmth, but they're separate--you don't get this mixture. I'm always thinking about what I call contamination, about how different colors cross over and mix into other colors on film, like oil paint. Digital for me, and I don't say this pejoratively, is more like watercolor. The colors are separate and if you mix them they don't cross over the way they do on film."

One of the most challenging sequences for Lachman involved shooting inside La Scala, the historic Milanese opera house. He says, "That was very important to Pablo because it was so instrumental in Maria's development as an artist. They had never let a narrative film crew in before and only let us in because it was Maria Callas. We were allowed inside for four hours and I had to come up with a solution for how to shoot such an expansive space. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough light and I was limited in what equipment I could take in, so that was the one scene I filmed digitally, with an ARRI ALEXA 35, matching our film look by using the Ultra Baltars and adding grain in post. The EL Zone System let me determine exposure through the camera and gave me confidence in my approach. I had thought I'd need to shoot at EI 1280 or 1600, but in the end we were fine at 800."

Looking back, Lachman is pleased with his experience on the shoot. "I had a great crew," he says. "The major crew came out of Germany, including Daniel Erb as the 1st AC and Thorsten Kosellek as gaffer, but I also had a very good Hungarian crew to supplement them. I was fortunate to have that kind of local support, as well as the support of NFI Filmlab and the ARRI Rental teams in Budapest and Berlin. I think we have made a film with many of the aesthetic forms and themes of opera, so I hope audiences feel part of Maria's world and her heightened sense of reality."