Certainly, that’s one takeaway from Pablo Larraín's new Maria Callas biopic, Maria.Maria stars Angelina Jolie as the famed Greek American opera singer who rose to fame in a flash and burned out just as spectacularly.

Yes, Maria is based on the true story of Greek opera singer Maria Callas, who died of a heart attack in 1977, when she was only 53 years old. Maria imagines the last few days of Callas’s life, in which once the once-great opera singer struggles with a drug addiction, hallucinations, and her declining health.

Little unknown facts like this would have made Maria¸the lushly visual but dramatically listless biopic about her life by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, a more revealing and entertaining movie. Mr. Larrain has done the same “poor me” job on two previous bloated bios of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana,