Movie Review: Golda

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent film about Israel's past prime minister, Golda Meir. 

This film is not in any way a traditional biopic, as it does not focus on her life story but rather how she delt with the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The majority of the movie takes place over a period of 19 days. There is a bit of backstory revealed through dialogue (including an excellent scene where she talks about her childhood over the phone), but this remains a movie about these 19 days. Yet the film does a wonderful job of still making us feel like we are watching the real person. Much of this is due to a lot of personality being put into this real-life character every time she is on screen. This is not a simple two-dimensional version of Golda but rather a complex representation of her. We can feel in every scene how driven she is and how tough not physically imposing how strong and powerful of a woman she was. Yet at the same time we see her make plenty of jokes (some of which are very funny). Still this always feels like the same person in every scene. Adding to this is a simply incredible performance by Helen Mirren. She completely disappears into the part and whenever you look and hear her you never feel like you are watching Helen Mirren. If you didn't know any better, you would swear you are actually watching the real Golda Meir (which is exactly what a movie based off a real-life person should be like). Helen Mirren is a wonderful actress with many great performances and this one deserves to be recognized along with her best. Some of the highlights for this movie are the scenes between Golda and Henry Kissinger (played wonderfully by Liev Schreiber). The movie does a fantastic job of conveying this complex but respectful relationship and the writing in these scenes is fantastic. This is a very dialogue heavy film (in fact we see little of the actual war), but the dialogue is often times very intelligent never simplifying anything or talking down to its audience. Yet for the most part it is still quite accessible to those who are not familiar with the historical events.   

This film does have its flaws though. One of them is that while Golda and Henry Kissinger are wonderfully portrayed all the other characters in the movie are quite bland and have little in the way of discernable personalities. This fault can especially be felt in some of the early scenes with large groups of characters and lots of dialogue. The focus on dialogue rather than visuals can often make this a movie feel not as cinematic as it should be. This is especially true of how certain story points are stated rather than shown. There are also a few scenes early on when there is simply a lot of information given to us all at once through dialogue and this can feel like a bit much. 

This is an excellent movie and it is a wonderful watch.