WARTIME LEADER OF ISRAEL MUSTERS VICTORY OUT OF DEFIANCE FOR THE ARAB OPPOSITION

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The swath of land set aside as a homeland for the Jewish people surviving the Holocaust must be defended over and over again from the Arab neighbors not much more than a stone throw away from Jerusalem.

Helen Mirren becomes Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in defense of the Jewish nation during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in Golda (2023).

Mirren wears a nose and facial prosthetic for the performance as the Israeli senior statesperson. Prosthetics designer Suzi Battersby creates that unmistakable visage of the biographical character for Mirren.

But only Mirren is able to bring the character together with that genuinely apologetic sincerity in her eyes that accompany that unmistakable pace of speech and use of language. Mirren delivers those blunt words of biting wisdom for which Golda Meir is known.

Camille Cottin plays the Prime Minister’s personal secretary, Lou Kaddar. And Ohad Knoller has a brief appearance as Ariel Sharon introducing a battle plan that is forecast to fail and actually does fail tragically when the strategy is eventually deployed.

The 1 hour 40 minute runtime suffices to make the point for a script highly focused on a specific event that captures the true biographical character, instead of a sweeping retrospective that loses a lot of details in the broad brush strokes required to cover so many decades and so many events.

Director Guy Nattiv creates tone and atmosphere with the sparing use of multi-media, black and white news reels and the interior lighting of the era.

The opening scenes spin the paranoia around yet another rumor about the possibility of war by using layers of transparencies from an overhead projector showing the geopolitics of the region.

Mirren talks Golda’s way out of this historical patterning with the artful grace of an accomplish actor.

Nattiv has good creative moments with the camera but too many static scenes are created for the discussions about military strategy in a singular room. These scenes are occasionally made a bit more interesting with the use of a score.

Composer Dascha Dauenhauer drips in the score with plucking strings and tapping percussion instruments to drive scenes in the military situation room and in the bunker type hallways with Meir and Kaddar walking toward the situation room.

Three stories are brought together like the transparencies for the overhead projector in the opening scenes. One story is the defense of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, October 6-25, 1973. A second story is that of the health of the protagonist who chain smokes her way through almost every scene. And a third story is that of a civilian inquiry into the government’s decision-making during the war.

Nattiv could have easily added another 20 minutes of runtime by developing a bit further bits and pieces of character development that at one point looked like they were leading into a series of character vignettes. But he didn’t.

Rami Heuberger shows General Moshe Dayan as having a bit of an existential crisis after hearing of the heavy military losses early in the war. Dayan also has this moment of horror in a helicopter overlooking the live fighting front that indicates his personal story is about to unravel on screen. But it doesn’t.

And then United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is waiting in the West Wing at the United States Capitol.

Newsreel footage foreshadows character developments further down the narrative, such as black and white images of Kissinger landing in Jerusalem as transition art for Liev Schreiber stepping into Golda Meir’s home as Kissinger.

Schreiber is able to create a bit of a presence throughout the film with just a few brief moments on camera, including those brief moments on the phone from Washington DC and in person in the home of Golda Meir.

The film is a vignette of Golda Meir as opposed to being a series of vignettes of several characters important to the story around and about Golda Meir.

If Nattiv does have an overall vision for the film, that theme would have to have something to do with investigations and introspection and the thousands of revisions required to defend and succeed.

Golda (2023) is currently showing in theaters.

The role requires more than a character actor that can perform authoritarian figures with dignity, but also a strong female character lead that can thwart the relentless attacks of the opposition.

Film stories are as fertile territory for the real as for the imagined, while the set can be as limited as a haunted house or as limitless as a vast kingdom.

And the film production adds to the character with the intricate details of a costume, while the wag of a dog’s tail and the distinct smoke of cannon fire has as much to say as the dialogue in bending and swaying the crowds.

Helen Mirren has that screen presence that enables her to be the managing editor of a Washington newspaper, a directing mind behind an intelligence operation, or the Empress of Russia, and perhaps the Queen of England of this era or perhaps that Queen of England of another era.

In Hitchcock (2012), Mirren plays the Second to the director of suspense. Anthony Hopkins wears a heavy prosthetic as director Alfred Hitchcock, while Mirren plays dear Mrs. Hitchcock as a doting loving wife. But the narrative soon twists and turns through many tedious arguments about financing and eating until the movie becomes a movie about a movie.

The psychodrama only touches the surface, though, since Mirren has the ability to move from film to film by wrapping her character in delicate layers that oscillate between human dignity and authoritarian hubris.

In The Last Station (2009) Sofya, the wife of Leo Tolstoy, is irate about the prospect of losing her legacy to a public trust as her famous husband begins to contemplate the value of his literary works during the last years of his life.

Christopher Plummer performs Tolstoy as a tolerant and loving husband who can overlook only so much animosity and infighting with his wife while being petitioned to make the endowment. Paul Giamatti plays the public interest represented by Chertkov, with James McAvoy as the go-between assistant Valentin, in supporting roles

The performance is influenced by the bubbling chaos of a heiress desperate to hold onto her legacy after birthing and raising 13 children during her marriage with the Russian author.

But everything is so much more reserved while simultaneously ordering people about and processing criticism before making decisions in the Queen (2006). Mirren received the Oscar for her leading performance as Queen Elizabeth II.

The narrative follows the Royal Family and the Prime Minister’s Office during the nation’s grief over the death of Princess Diana. Mirren shows how the Queen’s thoughts on the subject transition from denial to embracing the grief of a nation.

Michael Sheen plays British Prime Minister Tony Blair as sincerely grieving for the loss of the Princess but also continually calculating best political outcomes for himself as well as for Buckingham Palace. Alex Jennings plays Prince Charles. Jennings later plays the Duke of Windsor, the King Edward VIII that abdicated so as to be able to marry American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, in the Crown (2016-2022 TV Series).

Mirren was cast as the Queen after playing Elizabeth I (1533-1604) in the television series, Elizabeth I (2005 TV Series). Elizabeth I is portrayed as a much more boisterous and enigmatic monarch who commanded the attention and respect of her many male advisors.

Elizabeth is shown as having the personal strength required to maintain power while establishing the Protestant Church of England separate and apart from the dominant Catholic religion in Spain and France.

In Winchester (2018) the heiress of the American firearm manufacturer takes on the ghosts of her inherited fortune in a California mansion. Mirren wears the clothes of the time, but her real character comes from the many rooms of the mansion Sarah is having built and from the ghosts that visit them while she dissolves into the haunting shadows cast by the architecture.

Jason Clarke costars as Dr. Eric Price. The psychiatrist has been hired by the Winchester company board of governors to certify Sarah Winchester and relieve her of all the corporate duties.

Price obtains room and board from the heiress in the mansion to complete the medical assessment, but he soon finds out firsthand that what troubles her are the many ghosts of the people killed with Winchester rifles.

The heiress is portrayed as strong willed and commanding, but continually transitioning into and from a state compromised by the ghosts haunting the estate.

Clarke rejoins Mirren as a costar in Catherine the Great (2019 TV Series) about the charismatic Empress that expanded the Russian Empire.

Clarke plays Grigory Potemkin, the Military General in command of the Reformation. Potemkin and Catherine the Great have an ongoing love affair with many deeds of expansion being done in her honour. But the Queen still takes on many lovers to Potemkin’s dismay.

Mirren creates another character ever so subtly different from the character of Elizabeth I as that great woman of another era and another culture ruling Russia from 1762 to 1796. An added layer of masculinity creates a delicate balance that allows Empress Catherine II to rule in her public life but also maintain a somewhat more compromising dominance in her private affairs.

In Woman in Gold (2015) Mirren portrays the Jewish Refugee Maria Altmann, costarring Ryan Reynolds as lawyer Randy Schoenberg. Altmann maintains her dignity while petitioning the Austrian court of public opinion for the return of very famous paintings taken from her family by German Nazi looters prior to World War II.

Altmann faces the indignity of returning to Austria from her home in Los Angeles to petition the gallery to return her paintings. Mirren puts a mask of courage over the typically strong female character lead she has created for the screen.

The successful film career is not all about historical accuracy, though. Mirren can drop the biodrama act to portray contemporary female characters in positions of authority. In The Clearing (2004) Robert Redford and William Dafoe play kidnappee and kidnapper while Mirren plays the strong female maintaining the family presence.

In State of Play (2009) Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams play Washington newspaper journalists traversing an information paradigm with a congressman, played by Ben Affleck. Mirren is cast as the managing editor nurturing the press egos while bringing the story together beneath the headlines.

Any way the casting is called, Mirren plays strong female characters more often than not in positions of authority and privilege.

But in a rather serendipitous fashion, considering the costume, the set, the tone and atmosphere of the era, the character actor changes the screen persona with various bits of masculine and feminine layered on and about with dignity and grace.