Israel PM: ‘We’ve got trouble with the neighbours again’
This film is worth watching because of its relevance to today’s tensions in the Middle East, and for Helen Mirren’s performance.
“We’ve got troubles with the neighbours again.”
That’s how Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (Oscar winner Helen Mirren) sums up her news in a telephone call to US secretary of state Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) early in the ticking clock drama Golda.
The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu could say the same to Antony Blinken today underscores the timeliness – and in a sense timelessness – of this movie centred on the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
The war was started by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. Israel knew it was coming but the timing, on October 6, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, was unexpected, and Meir is haunted by her failure to act sooner.
October 7, 2023, was, of course, the day Hamas-led Palestinian militants attacked Israel. What Meir says in 1973 resonates today: “We will teach our enemies a lesson they will never forget.”
Her eye patch-wearing defence minister, Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger), agrees: “We will crush their bones. We will tear them limb from limb.” He advises the PM to nuke the Arabs.
The strength of this film is that is does not show the battlefield. It shows Meir, her ministers, military commanders and security advisers in a control room hearing, via audio links to the troops, the fight on the ground. During one of the early battles, the last words they hear are: “The Zionists are dead.’’
This is the main theme in Golda. How a nation’s leader – “I’m a politician, not a soldier” – deals with the sharp end of conflict, and in this case one in which the US and Soviet Union are breathing heavily on the sidelines, as they are today.
It’s desperate hour on two fronts. The chain-smoking Meir fights another battle: the lymphoma that will kill her in 1978, aged 80. Here she trusts not generals but her private secretary, Paris-born Lou Kaddar (French actor Camille Cottin from the 2015-2020 television series Call My Agent!). “If the Arabs reach Tel Aviv,” she tells her, seeking her promise. “I will not be taken alive.”
This film is directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who won an Oscar for his 2018 live-action short Skin. The script is by British screenwriter Nicholas Martin.
Its weakness is that it’s a hybrid of acted drama and documentary.
There’s too much reliance on news footage of the real Meir. Characters appear with who-they-are explanatory captions that a good script would not need.
It’s worth watching because of its relevance to today’s tensions in the Middle East, and for Mirren’s performance. A scene where Ukrainian-born Meir talks about being a frightened Jewish child as Cossacks rode through town is pivotal.
Mirren has received, and accepted, some criticism for taking on this role as she’s not Jewish.
Meir’s grandson, Gideon, wanted her for the part. If you want to read more about that, search for an article he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine on August 26, 2023.
He doesn’t mention this but another Oscar winner who has played his grandmother is Ingrid Bergman in the 1982 telemovie A Woman Called Golda. In that movie, the young Golda is Australia’s Judy Davis.
Golda (PG)
100 minutes
In cinemas
★★★
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