Helen Mirren as Golda Meir [Jasper_Wolf]

GOLDA
Directed by Guy Nattiv
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

IT was 50 years ago this week that Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria. Known as the Yom Kippur War – the conflict began on the day of the Jewish festival – the fighting lasted three weeks and had long reverberations. Golda, starring Helen Mirren, is a personal consideration of the pressure the Israeli prime minister faced when the conflict began.

There has been a lot of noise: from the casting of Mirren in the lead, to the question of Golda Meir’s legacy.

Director Nattiv does not attempt to walk the tightrope of opinion when it comes to Israel, Palestine and the fratricide that takes place in the Middle East.

That may be an elephant in the room criticism about such a divisive figure as Meir – but that does not make this a bad film. It suggests that the makers were aware of the issues focusing on Israel will prompt and decided in a 100-minute movie about a female leader, a character study would be appropriate.

We meet Golda as she chews over intelligence reports that troops were massing on their borders. She faces the horrible choice of launching a pre-emptive strike, or holding her nerve. It doesn’t help that calling up army reservists on the most important day of the Jewish calendar would be controversial.

She has to balance the crucial need for USA support. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) has a wider problem, as Egypt is backed by the USSR, and America relies on Saudi oil. Yet Kissinger is desperate to help Israel – and backstairs politicking is revealed as the two trade rhetorical blows.

Coupled with this, Golda’s chain smoking had given her lung cancer, and while making life or death decisions, she faced her own war. To keep her treatment secret, she attended radiotherapy sessions at night – and entered through a morgue, giving her a corridor of dead feet to negotiate, a reminder of her mortality, and that her word would cause deaths.

Nattiv seeks to create tension. A stenographer taking notes is the mother of a soldier – a clunky trick to personalise the effect a politician has on the individual. Golda carefully writes down reported deaths of Israeli troops in a notebook – a reminder her actions have awful consequences.

Schreiber offers a scene-stealing turn. But Mirren as Golda, ignoring her prosthetics which occasionally catch the attention, carries the heavy burden of portraying a figurehead for a country with a turbulent past, present and future.