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Golda, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 24, 2023

Cutting through the thorny politics of the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict and the matter of the official borders of the state of Israel, Golda focuses on one particular chapter in the life and political career of Golda Meir, who served as Prime Minister of Israel during a tumultuous five-year period. The film has a lot more to cut through, as well, but in its depiction of the behind-the-scenes strategizing and negotiation that takes place over the course of a short-lived but costly war, screenwriter Nicholas Martin and director Guy Nattiv provide a compelling portrait of leadership under pressure.

The first and most obvious of the film's likely controversies to address, perhaps, is the casting of Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, as one of the most famous Jewish women—if not the most famous one—in the realm of international politics. One's tolerance for the decision will vary, of course, especially considering the unfortunate, initially distracting prosthetic nose that Mirren wears to better match her appearance to the real Meir's. It's a loaded piece of makeup, to say the least, for reasons that go beyond the notion of physical accuracy. The best argument to make is that the filmmakers' thinking is, at best, shortsighted but that their intentions, as well as Mirren's, are good.

This interpretation of Meir, in terms of both the writing and the performance, is no caricature, either of a specific person or in a larger sense that one might infer from the alteration of Mirren's physicality. The film's Golda is a presented as a complex and conflicted figure—one who too well knows the price that has been and, in the story's setting of 1973, continues to be paid for Israel's existence as a sovereign country. The constant battle here, as men and women fight and die in disputed territories and beyond in the backdrop, is between two conflicting necessities for Golda.

The first, of course, is the preservation of Israel as it stands when she came to power. The second is the preservation of the lives of those men and women, facing massive odds against them and caught by relative surprise—in part because of some oversight within the operation of the Prime Minister's government. From a pragmatic standpoint, both of these goals cannot be met without sacrificing some part of the other, so what does that leave Golda to decide and do?

Most of this story, then, comes down to a series of meeting—in the offices of power, in military headquarters, in Golda's private residence, in whatever space is available at moments of consequence. The discussions are fascinating, not only as a matter of strategy, but also as scenes that reveal distinct personalities, differing opinions, and varying reactions to the constant and constantly rising tension of the moral and political dilemmas put before these characters.

The story begins a couple days before the start of what will come to be known, among other names, as the Yom Kippur War, when Golda first hears rumors that both Syria and Egypt might be raising troops, equipment, vehicles, and artillery for a multi-pronged assault. "The fighting is coming," a few in positions of such knowledge, including Mossad head Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan), tell the Prime Minister. The fighting is always coming and has been since the creation of Israel, she responds, but the doubts eventually convince her to raise a combat force of her country's own, despite the arrival of the holy day.

When war does arrive, Golda and the military brass are prepared. They simply aren't prepared, though, for the sheer size and number of the forces on the other side of the fighting.

Strong military leaders are reduced complete uncertainty or, in the case of Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger), panic, as the seasoned veteran, who has fought and wears the scars of decades' worth of combat, is so overwhelmed by the sight of an entire Israeli battalion being wiped out in a matter of minutes that he vomits in the helicopter carrying him over the site of the fighting. Others, like national military hero Ariel Sharon (Ohad Knoller), have ambitious plans to move into Egypt at the risk of more soldiers, putting Golda, who keeps track of each number of reports of the dead in a notepad, in the position of weighing a decisive potential victory against the equal possibility of another ambush.

All of these decisions, obviously, do come down to Golda, who is in her late 70s at the time, undergoing radiation treatment for the aggressive lymphoma that will result in her death in about five years, and juggling all of the advice of her government ministers and military leaders, all of the internal conflict that this war brings to the surface, and the political concerns of international allies and foes in the process. A key question is how the United States, with President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) trying to stay neutral so as not to upset the oil supplies afforded by Saudi Arabia, will or won't respond to the war. That adds another layer of complication for Golda to navigate.

Whatever one's opinion of Meir—even the film is keen to note some controversy by way of opening text, a commission hearing that serves as a shaky framing device, and the story's coda—may be, Golda presents her a tough, strong-willed, and determined leader during a time defined by war, strife, and uncertainty. If the film overlooks or condenses the larger conflict at the heart of this narrative, its portrayal of the woman at the heart of this specific story is one of enough complexity to compensate for those shortcomings.

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