Golda Meir’s responsibility for the results of the Yom Kippur War is on full display in Golda, boiling notable historical figures’ lives down to a few weeks of conflict. The story of Meir and her time as Israel’s Prime Minister is valuable to research and excavate, but viewers hoped for a modern peek into the leader’s mind with this biopic. As is the case about half the time in this genre, filmmaking took precedence over a revealing portrayal of the central subject.
‘Golda’ Plot Summary
Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel in the early 1970s, is the subject of director Guy Nattiv’s 2023 film. From the indie distributor Bleecker Street, Golda primarily dramatizes the events of the Yom Kippur War, where Meir’s skills as a country’s leader reach their most trying test.
‘Golda’ Stars Helen Mirren in Unrecognizable Prosthetics
Casting Dame Helen Mirren in a film essentially guarantees critical and awards attention. However, Golda is one of the clearest recent examples of a movie hiding its actors’ work behind its display of filmmaking craft. In any discussion about war and international tension, the humanity of a central subject should supersede the thrills, but instead, the film works against Mirren in trying to portray Meir. When showing her acting, Nattiv’s shots are often distant and composed, and when at a close-up, we hardly get a glimpse of more than glowering, if we see her face at all. Select moments almost elevate this film, but the dry dialogue makes them few and far between.
Helen Mirren in ‘Golda’
Nattiv’s Filmmaking Once Again Buries the Message
From his take on the film, we know that Nattiv sought to portray Meir in contrast with the current leadership of Israel. By his distant filmmaking methods, this does not come across at all, seeming to try and tell audiences something about the subject yet mostly remaining obscure. Like in his previous and most well-known feature, Skin, the potential for a fact-based takeaway stays gray and dulled. Nattiv lets the actors run wilder in Skin for a slightly more engaging experience, but he does not handle his actors nearly as well as his similarly skilled contemporaries. In Golda, the director’s intentions disappear as he forces everyone into a submissive state while drama happens offscreen.
Any proper movie about war successfully reads violence as hellish and grueling, but the best have a human center. Golda mutes the latter sentiment, making everyone’s relatively stoic manner far too withholding to sustain interest. By safely steering away from any proper talk about modern politics surrounding Israel, Golda is a simple dramatization that disguises what might have been a stirring central performance with cinematic tendencies.
Golda is streaming now on Paramount+ with Showtime.