In Pablo Larraín’s Trilogy of Important Women, Fables of Tragedy are Woven For Our Entertainment

When Pablo Larraín was first approached by Darren Arronofsky to direct a biopic on the life of Jackie Kennedy, he was baffled by the prospect. The Chilean director knew very little about the Kennedys and, at that point, only had experience directing films that focused on men. An English language biopic about the life of the most iconic First Lady in American history felt like an odd choice for his next project. But after reading more about Kennedy’s life, Larraín became intrigued by the mythology surrounding the woman. In her, he would later claim, one could find all the elements that you needed for a film: “rage, curiosity, and love.”

Jackie (2016) kick-started what would later be known as Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of iconic or “important” women from the 20th century, a set of films about women who he deemed as culturally important in the decades leading up to the turn of the century. Larraín followed Jackie with Spencer in 2022, documenting the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and finally, with the release of Maria this year, Larraín’s trilogy will come to a close. Though the director claims that he never intended on these films being a connected trio, there are clear aesthetic and narrative similarities between them.

There is a superficial narrative thread to be found in this trilogy: Maria depicts the singer’s affair with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haruk Bilginer) who was also, at one point in time, married to Jackie Kennedy. But the cord that ties these films together into one cohesive project is far more intricate than an offhand connection between the main characters. In contrast with standard biopics that gloss over decades and skip along the surface of a subject’s life, Larraín focuses his films on a specific and tumultuous moment in the lives of three of the world’s most beloved female figures. Jackie details the days immediately following the assassination of Jackie Kennedy’s (Natalie Portman) husband John F. Kennedy in 1963, Spencer covers the Christmas period of 1991 when Diana (Kristen Stewart) was weighing up the decision to divorce Prince Charles and leave the British royal family, and Maria follows the legendary opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) during her final years of isolation in Paris in the late 1970s. This focus gives Larraín’s films a kind of direction that other biopics sometimes lack.

In taking three of the most tragic, public-facing female figures of the 20th century and finding art in their tragedy, Larraín completes an abstract, decades-long media project of capturing these women and immortalizing them in the public consciousness. His chosen subjects are all women who were hounded by the media and came to be defined by public perceptions of who they were. They are treated as characters, dolls whose lives Larraín can dress up until he lands on a specific image that suits his fancy. Jackie is damsel-like in both manner and appearance, her dedication to her family and to the preservation of American history being her most commendable trait. Diana is an affable woman of the people and a charming wit weighed down by the pressure of royal duties. Maria is an operatic icon turned reclusive, tortured artist. Pablo Larraín takes these perceptions and pulls at the loose threads to unravel the women beneath the public image, fashioning a new story for them.

The idea of image and public perception is a central preoccupation of these films, and Larraín is upfront about the way he takes liberties with his subjects’ lives. Spencer opens with a disclaimer: “A fable from a true tragedy.” Larraín makes it clear from the opening moments that what we are seeing is not a work of nonfiction, but rather a story constructed around the assumptions and wide-held beliefs of who this woman was. Similarly, in both Jackie and Maria, the main characters open their films by gesturing vaguely towards the narratives that have been spun about them in the media. Jackie tells the reporter interviewing her that “I’ve grown accustomed to a great divide between what people believe and what I know to be real.” In Maria, the singer asserts that “what is real and what is not real is my business.” Without the narrative device of a reporter, Spencer has to be a little more creative, meaning that this moment of revelation around the formation of Diana’s public identity comes in the form of Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) stating that there has to be two versions of the princess: “the real one and the one they take pictures of.” This is echoed in Maria when Larraín highlights the dichotomy of the singer’s identity by having his interviewer explicitly ask, “Should I call you Maria or La Callas?” In each instance, Larraín makes it clear that although we are supposedly seeing these women’s perspectives, their lives are still being filtered through someone else’s lens.

This blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality is reflected in Larraín’s filmmaking choices. The director operates as both an observer and a hunter, simultaneously watching his prey and waiting for the chance to pounce on a moment of emotional vulnerability. The most minute facial expressions are captured through close-up shots, every movement followed by the camera tracking these women from room to room. His subjects are often seen through mirrors, their faces translated through reflections and captured among the hazy glow of their settings. Jackie is lit by the crystals of the White House chandeliers, Diana in the glow of the candelabras in Sandringham House, Maria under the amber glow of an afternoon sun in Paris. In these almost ethereal settings, the lead actresses play up the preconceived notions of how these women moved through the world. Portman embodies the mannerisms that we now associate so closely with Jackie Kennedy—her lilting voice, delicate gestures, and keen eye for art and architecture. For Stewart it is Diana’s emphatic tone, the way her head tilts to the side with every other word, how she looks up from beneath her lashes as though shy to meet the prying eyes of whoever is staring her down. For Jolie, it’s the elegant confidence with which Maria holds herself on stage and the way she glides through the world like a ghost floating inches above everyone else. The effect is one of a dreamlike ambiance, as though what we are watching is merely a rose-tinted facsimile of a reality we can never truly have access to.

These iconic figures have been remolded to fit Pablo Larrain’s vision and put on display for our entertainment. As Diana says of the paparazzi in Spencer, “Their lenses are more like microscopes, and I am the insect in the dish.” Here, Larraín’s lens is the microscope. The picture-perfect illusions of who these women were are shattered by the buried tragedy of their lives rising to the surface. In the wake of her husband’s murder, Jackie confronts the grief she carries from the loss of two of their children and admits that she hopes someone kills her next. In her final years, Maria reflects on a childhood experienced through poverty, cynically stating that “happiness has never produced a beautiful melody.” Diana’s days are plagued by a constant feeling of being watched—by the press, by the royal family, and by members of the household staff most of all. She agonizes over her weight and forces herself to throw up after dinners before binge-eating in the middle of the night away from the prying eyes of others, and even cuts her arm with a pair of wire cutters on Christmas Day (by Diana’s own admission, she suffered from bulimia and depression and engaged in acts of self-harm while married to Charles). These women, once so untouchable in their stardom, are made tangible to Larraín’s audiences, their weaknesses laid bare and their humanness on display. They are the insects in the dish torn apart for us to examine.

Using Jackie, Spencer, and Maria as his titles as opposed to Kennedy, Princess of Wales, or La Callas suggests an active effort on Larraín’s part to present his films as hosting these women’s perspectives, but beneath this veneer of empathy lies an ever-present appetite for the excavation of female tragedy as entertainment. Jackie opens with the reporter declaring, “I will settle for a story that’s believable.” After six years and three quasi-biopics that feel much more like dramatic renditions of a single moment in time, Larraín has completed his trilogy of somewhat believable stories about women with larger-than-life public personas who are brought back down to earth by the kind of suffering that makes for irresistible entertainment.

Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).