Golda – a smokey, talky historical biopic

We’re always happy to see Helen Mirren being able to strut her regal stuff in a historical biopic, if only as a way to make us forget all those bleached boss-bitch Fast and Furious cameos. Unfortunately, Golda, is not a film which allows Miren to flex many of her supple actor muscles, as it is a story largely confined to cramped, featureless rooms in which fugs of cigarette smoke suck all the air out.

Indeed, one-time Israeli prime minister Golda Meir’s predilection for chain-smoking through meetings, altercations and even inquisitions is one of the key visual signifiers that this film is taking place in the early 1970s. It charts, in rather fastidious detail, the build-up and fall-out of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which invading forces from Egypt, Syria and Jordan prepare a siege on Israel.

Indeed, director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin have opted for an approach of informational bombast, where human drama plays second (even third!) fiddle to the reams and reams of technical jargon and attempts to relay the complex political situation for those who aren’t in the know. It’s admirable that the makers have placed such import on the context and ramifications of this world-shaking event, but the film often plays retooled meeting transcripts, or monologues that have been ripped directly from textbooks. Meir, in the end, is little more than a cypher for the plot.

The film does underscore the radical nature of Golda’s tenure, and it’s intriguing that she rarely interfaces with other women. Indeed, it’s as if Nattiv is attempting to sublimate her gender as a way to celebrate the forcefulness of her personality, and while it does too often feel bogged down in box-ticking history, it does present its subject as someone who was so tough that ingrained misogyny rarely even registered with her. In that sense, she was something of an exception.

Meanwhile, Nattiv struggles to add a layer of excitement to proceedings, experimenting with sound design and camera movement as a way to enliven the scads of conversation, but it doesn’t quite work. The highlight of the film comes right at the end where we see some archive footage of Golda interacting with some of her supporters, and it’s never a good sign in these endeavours when reality is so much more electrifying and vital than the fiction.

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