By Eleanor Ringel Cater
As Israel’s only female prime minister, Helen Mirren goes for the gold – as in, Oscar gold – in “Golda,” a tedious and piecemeal reconstruction of Golda Meir’s handling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Buried under enough make-up and prosthetics to choke the entire cast of Adam Sandler’s “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” Mirren gives a scattershot and humorless depiction of the woman who beat the Arabs, Nixon, the Russians and Henry Kissinger at their own game. To say nothing of the dozen or so male minions (including Moshe Dayan) tasked with running the war for her.
Actually, I’m not so sure Dayan should be on that list. The movie is so unclear – so confident we know a lot more about Meir and the Yom Kippur War than many of us do – that it’s difficult to decide whom to blame for the film’s utter failure.
The most intimate, carefully drawn relationship in the picture is between Meir and her pack of cigarettes. There are countless close-ups of Mirren, emphasizing her take-THIS-Bradley-Cooper nose and, well, hairy chin. In case we still don’t get that Meir wasn’t exactly a looker, she’s dumpily shaped, badly dressed and thick ankled.
Directed by Guy Nattiv, the film offers almost no insights into who Meir was – from family matters to ministerial decisions. She’s battling cancer at the same time she’s battling the Arab world, but there’s more to illness than coughing up blood (which we get to see, graphically). And there’s more to running a war than a cheap rendition in which the Israeli soldiers’ precarious situation is conveyed via desperate conversations overheard on headphones (stuff like, “We’re surrounded!” and “I don’t want to die!”).
Perhaps it helps to already know more about what a controversial figure Meir was in her homeland. Or more details about the war itself. Or the high-stakes politics in the background.
But as is, “Golda” is a disappointment and a bore. There is, however, one genuinely amusing moment. Kissinger (a debonair Live Schreiber) has dropped by her home, and Meir’s assistant offers him some homemade soup. Not only isn’t he hungry, but the meal isn’t very tasty. “Eat it,” Golda stage-whispers. “She’s a survivor” (as in the Holocaust).
Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be funny, but Mirren plays it like it is. An actor’s hunger, perhaps, for a few decent moments in a woeful movie.
I can only compliment Nativ. As an Israeli who was born in Israel, I see your point and understand it. However, *Golda* is not a documentary. It is a docudrama that leaves freedom for some immagination. Your only task as a audience is to judge *Golda* as drama BASED on real life events.