Angelina Jolie's Maria features a shocking twist involving Kodi Smit-McPhee's Mandrax.
Jolie stars in the Netflix biographical thriller as the renowned real-life opera singer Maria Callas living out her final years in solitude in Paris, France.
The film marks the end of director Pablo Larraín's trilogy centered on important 20th-century women, following in the footsteps of 2016's Jackie and 2021's Spencer.
What Is Mandrax In Maria Netflix Movie?
There is a twist that accompanies Kodi Smit-McPhee's Mandrax character in Netflix's new streaming thriller, Maria.
While the film is led by Mr. and Mrs. Smith actress Angelina Jolie, Smit-McPhee gets one of the biggest moments in the film, as fans are left questioning whether his character in the film was real or not.
Smit-McPhee's Mandrax is a human character seen on screen throughout the film, a journalist and filmmaker profiling Jolie's Maria Callas — the reclusive former opera star who is trying to escape the limelight in Paris.
He is seen throughout the film in conversation with Jolie's character, with limited interaction with the outside world.
One would assume Mandrax is a real person, being this key part of the movie and one of the major sounding boards for Callas in her final years, but that may not be the case after all.
Curiously, Mandrax shares a name with a prescription sedative (also known as Quaaludes and Methaqualone) that Maria abused later in her life. One of the side effects of such drugs is vivid hallucinations, perhaps implying that Smit-McPhee's character is not real at all but rather a figment of Callas' imagination.
Callas was addicted to Mandrax in real life, something that would lead to the heart attack that would ultimately take her life in 1977 (at age 53).
The end of Maria seemingly confirms the Mandrax character is not real, showing that the journalist is nothing but a drug-induced construct of Callas' prescription pill-addicted brain. This reveals whole new layers of moments from the film.
Scenes where Mandrax shares concerning looks with other people in the world are revealed to instead be that person worried for the former famous opera singer as she is not sitting doing an interview like it looked like in the moment but is talking to herself in a hallucinatory fever dream.
It is unknown exactly how Callas came into possession of Mandrax in the first place, but some have speculated the sedative may have been prescribed to her thanks to a private diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
Maria, which is now streaming on Netflix, is set to be a hot topic in the next couple of months as it enters the awards conversation along with the likes of Emilia Perez and The Brutalist (read more about The Brutalist's streaming info here).
