A titan of the stage and screen, Dame Helen Mirren turns her formidable talent to a challenging new role in her latest biopic: that of Israel’s first (and so far only) female prime minister, Golda Meir – a role that has not been without controversy, since Mirren is not Jewish (the film’s Israeli director, Guy Nattiv, has pointed out that it was Meir’s own family who suggested Mirren).
Often referred to as the “Iron Lady of Israel”, Meir was elected to office at the grand age of 70 and most notably led the country through the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. It’s this tense three-week conflict which Nicholas Martin’s sombre script zeroes in on, with an extremely potted history of the Israeli state offered in the film’s opening montage.
Donning heavy prosthetics, orthopedic shoes, and mostly obscured behind a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, Mirren is taciturn and steely. Despite Meir’s physical frailty – she is shown undergoing treatment for lymphatic cancer – her mind is sharp and vicious. She is often the only woman in a roomful of men and it’s clear that Meir can more than hold her own during negotiations about the intensifying conflict.
But she’s a woman, so of course it’s essential to emphasise a maternal pleasantness within Meir, notably towards her private secretary Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin) but also, in one odd scene, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) who arrives in Israel to negotiate a ceasefire. Golda insists that he eats a bowl of borscht, despite his polite declination. Because of course she does.
Perhaps Martin and Nattiv opt for such mundane moments to distract from the difficulty of capturing the complexity of Israeli history and politics in a two-hour drama. Meir remains a divisive figure, particularly owing to her views on Palestine, which is something this film (perhaps wisely) does not even attempt to incorporate. By zeroing in on a pivotal month we are afforded a very brief snapshot of both personal and political history, as Meir grapples with the responsibility and guilt she feels regarding Israeli casualties in the conflict.
Yet Golda is more like a chapter of a dusty history book than an invigorating, timely glimpse into the past. Nattiv attempts some directorial flourishes (a bit of shakey cam here, some disturbing audio footage of warfare there) but they undermine the austerity of the script. In the brief glimpse of archival footage we see of the real Meir, she seems far more spirited and interesting than the character Dame Helen is playing. Undoubtedly one of our country’s finest actors, she is somehow eclipsed by her own greige ensemble as she shambles through the corridors of power. Perhaps the question isn’t who should have played her but why make such a firebrand so dull?
In cinemas
100 mins, cert 12A
