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Helen Mirren gets lost beneath layers of heavy prosthetics and a swirl of incessant cigarette smoke in “Golda.”

Given that she’s one of the greatest actresses of her time, Mirren naturally finds ways to reveal glimmers of humanity in her portrayal of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. But the artifice of her physical transformation too often smothers her, resulting in a stoicism that makes her an elusive figure. Director Guy Nattiv ’s film takes place during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Arab forces, led by Egypt, attacked Israel during its holiest time of the year. It was a dire and deadly situation to be sure, and it severely tested Meir, who remains the only woman ever to hold that leadership position.

But underneath the bushy eyebrows, wiry wig, and thick ankles, who was she? Aside from the obvious ache she experiences when she learns of mounting Israeli casualties, how did she feel about this conflict?

Working from a script by Nicholas Martin , Nattiv depicts this fraught period through a series of dry, repetitive strategy meetings between Meir and her top military advisers. He favors overhead shots of maps spread across conference room tables, with ashtrays packed with crushed cigarette butts scattered among them. Meir was a notorious chain smoker, and we see her lighting up every chance she gets—even as she’s lying in the hospital receiving treatments for her aggressive lymphoma. We hear the click of her lighter so often it actually becomes annoying. 

This ailment might have allowed us to better understand Meir, but she remains frustratingly out of reach, even in her suffering. But there’s a bitter irony in the fact that she sees her doctor in secret at the morgue, and each time she walks down the hallway toward her appointment, more and more bodies are stacked up along the walls. It’s a powerful image.

We see Meir’s spirit and her spark, though, in her conversations with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, played with understated wit and wisdom by an always-terrific Liev Schreiber . Here is someone who truly understands what she’s going through and with whom she can speak more openly as a peer. In these moments, it’s as if the clouds have parted and a ray of sunlight is shining through. Mirren and Schreiber have a warm chemistry with each other and share a sense of humor that’s missing elsewhere. One scene in particular, involving a bowl of homemade borscht, speaks volumes about who these people are and the values that define them. “Golda” as a whole could have used a lot more of that kind of revelation.

We also see Meir’s kind-heartedness in the way she treats her employees, especially the women who work for her. She has a lovely rapport with Camille Cottin (“ Stillwater ”), the loyal aide who tenderly washes Meir’s hair in the tub, pulling out chunks as a result of her cancer treatment. Again, these moments of humanity feel too few and far between.

Instead, Nattiv relies too heavily on interspersing archival war footage into conversations to illustrate what the characters are talking about, including Rami Heuberger as Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Lior Ashkenazi as Israeli military chief David “Dado” Elazar. All are solid despite being stuck in one-note roles. Nattiv’s 2019 drama “Skin”—based on his Oscar-winning, live-action short of the same name—had a visceral quality to its pacing, but “Golda” feels comparatively sedate.

The most tantalizing moment comes at the end; by then, it's too late. We see a black-and-white snippet of the real Golda Meir on television, sitting beside Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat at a news conference, radiating humor and charisma, using her power as a woman to charm and disarm. That’s the person Helen Mirren could have brought tremendously to life.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Golda (2023)

Rated PG-13 for thematic material and pervasive smoking.

100 minutes

Helen Mirren as Golda Meir

Liev Schreiber as Henry Kissinger

Camille Cottin

Lior Ashkenazi as David 'Dado' Elazar

Ellie Piercy as Shir Shapiro

Ed Stoppard as Benny Peled

Rotem Keinan as Zvi Zamir

Dvir Benedek as Eli Zeira

Dominic Mafham as Haim Bar-Lev

• Nicholas Martin

Cinematographer

• Jasper Wolf
• Arik Lahav-Leibovich
• Dascha Dauenhauer

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Review: Helen Mirren shines (and smokes) in an otherwise lackluster ‘Golda’

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The first time you see Helen Mirren as the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, she comes at you in stern little fragments: a puckered mouth taking a long, slow drag on a cigarette (one of many), then the back of a head, the hair pulled back in a severe bun. “Golda,” a title card declares over a closeup of two thick-browed eyes. It’s like watching an illusion come together slowly, piece by piece, in a movie that all but dares you to see the great actor hidden beneath the meticulously applied wrinkles. The last time Mirren played a world leader on the big screen, in “The Queen,” she reminded us that heavy lies the head that wears the crown. In “Golda,” apparently, no less heavy lies the head that wears layers upon layers of prosthetic pancake.

Directed by the Israeli American filmmaker Guy Nattiv ( “Skin” ) from a script by the English screenwriter Nicholas Martin ( “Florence Foster Jenkins” ), “Golda” purports to track the bloody events of October 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian forces, armed with Soviet-supplied weapons, mounted a surprise attack on Israel on the holiest day of its calendar. Through this harrowing 18-day conflict, known as the Yom Kippur War, the movie also seeks to illuminate the indomitable spirit of a leader who steered her young nation, imperfectly but with great courage, through failures of intelligence, crises of political conscience and thousands of military casualties.

Really, though, “Golda” isn’t about any of these things. It’s much more about Mirren’s anxious but determined gait as her Golda enters a room full of distracted male colleagues, or strides across a Tel Aviv rooftop to be alone with her thoughts and have another smoke. It’s about all the vividly cinematic ways she can wield a cigarette, as both a signifier of defiance (she’s dying, slowly, of cancer) and an emblem of personal style. It’s about all the external details, those fleeting but eminently exploitable points of contact between Mirren’s brilliance as a performer and Meir’s brilliance as a leader. “Golda” feeds that time-honored tradition of watching a virtuoso screen performer vanish behind a famous name and a wall of cinematic artifice.

Hoary as it can be, the practice still reliably wows audiences and awards voters, as recent-ish Oscar winners like Jessica Chastain , Renée Zellweger , Rami Malek and Gary Oldman can attest. Lately, though, the tradition has also taken on some critical and culturally specific baggage, some of it tied to the forthcoming, much-buzzed biopic “Maestro,” in which a non-Jewish actor, Bradley Cooper, dons a fake schnoz to play a Jewish celebrity, Leonard Bernstein . “Golda,” arriving with far less fanfare in theaters this week, has been caught up in a quieter version of the same controversy.

The “should only Jews play Jews?” debate won’t be revived here, much less resolved. Suffice to say that if this is artifice, then it is artifice of a very high caliber. As the sickly, septuagenarian Meir, Mirren packs fierce authority, grandmotherly warmth, touching uncertainty and wry resignation into an uncharacteristically stooped and heavily padded frame. (She also suggests, with her distinctly American intonations, a hint of Golda’s hardscrabble Milwaukee upbringing.) Her performance, far from being the movie’s greatest drawback, is the best and perhaps only interesting thing about it.

The more glaring problem is that “Golda” itself never rises above the level of an actor’s showcase, never achieves — despite some noticeable effort — a more complicated, challenging reading of history. An expository prologue doesn’t inspire confidence; moving from Israel’s founding in 1948 to its triumph over its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War of 1967, it plows through roughly two decades of tumultuous history with all the verve of an awards show highlights reel. Equally perfunctory is a framing device set in January 1974, as unsmiling members of the Agranat Commission grill Meir about the intelligence failures that precipitated the surprise Yom Kippur attack months earlier.

The movie’s account of those failures — but also the failures of Egypt and Syria, which seize but cannot maintain the upper hand — is appreciably absorbing, even if the war itself, waged on two fronts on the Sinai Peninsula and in the Golan Heights, is kept largely hidden from view. It thus falls to the swift, fluid movements of Jasper Wolf’s camera and the suspenseful thrum of Dascha Dauenhauer’s score to bring this rickety war room procedural to life. The tension is heightened by the steady clacking of typewriter keys and, from time to time, the soldiers’ screams we hear being transmitted from the battlefront, screams that lodge indelibly in Meir’s memory and give the life-and-death stakes an insistently human voice.

Her concern for her people could scarcely be more palpable; watch how Mirren softens Golda’s face and posture in the presence of her secretary, whose ill-fated soldier son becomes a convenient stand-in for thousands of other young men on the front lines. But her natural empathy turns out to be the flip side of her utter ruthlessness as a tactician and negotiator. You see that mix of vulnerability and steel at play as Golda submits to lymphoma treatments, furiously chain-smoking through every one. You also see it in her compassionate yet highly strategic dealings with her closest colleagues (played by actors including Lior Ashkenazi, Dvir Benedek and Rami Heuberger), whose occasional lapses of judgment and failures of nerve provide ample opportunity for Golda to step in and do what she can to redeem an impossible situation.

She can only do so much, of course, since she, like the state she governs, operates at the behest of bigger, more powerful geopolitical entities. Martin’s script acknowledges the fragile, conditional nature of Israel’s alliance with the U.S., especially given the latter’s newfound reliance on Middle East oil imports. That gives rise to a few juicily entertaining scenes involving U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (a guarded Liev Schreiber), who emerges as Meir’s most significant ally and sparring partner. She is never more fully at the peak of her negotiating powers than when Kissinger briefly passes through Tel Aviv, where she forces him to consume a bowl of borscht and offer Israel some badly needed reinforcements.

Given the deliberate narrowness of the movie’s perspective, it makes sense that Kissinger should be presented solely in terms of his significance to Israel. But if the more troubling aspects of his own legacy are left pointedly off-screen, so is a deeper, longer view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the hard lessons of the Yom Kippur War and the anguish that Israel would both endure and inflict in the decades to follow. The movie opens with an on-screen acknowledgment of Israel’s 1967-fueled “hubris,” a provocative notion that is left to linger and finally fade away at roughly the same moment Golda does. The morally ambiguous fog of war that this movie seems so intent on conjuring, and peering into, ultimately dissipates like cigarette smoke.

'Golda'

In English, Hebrew and Arabic, with English subtitles Rating: PG-13, for thematic material and pervasive smoking Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: Starts Aug. 25 in general release

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Golda review – Helen Mirren as former Israeli PM is upstaged by cigarette smoke

Mirren ​c​an’t save this​ stifling study of Golda Meir during 1973’s Yom Kippur war

T here’s a stifling quality to this portrait of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren, encased in spongy-looking layers of prosthetics), even before she has filled every frame with a fug of secondhand smoke. Unfolding over the brief, traumatic 19 days of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the film plays out in sombre war rooms and oppressive offices. But for a couple of rooftop cigarette breaks and a trip to meet the troops, it could almost be a single-location stage play.

Director Guy Nattiv opens up the story by giving the PM stark visions of the conflict. And the score – metallic, jarring – adds tension. But Golda, forever peering beadily over an overfilled ashtray, remains oddly underdeveloped as a character.

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‘Golda’ Review: Helen Mirren Channels Golda Meir in a Tense Dramatization of the Yom Kippur War

She brings the prime minister to flinty, vibrant life at a time when Israel faced an existential threat.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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Meir was 75 when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria. Both countries were attempting to recapture lands — the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights — that had been taken by Israel during the Six-Day War. But this was not just a tactical turf war. Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt who spearheaded the aggression, knew that he probably couldn’t win the war, and his deeper intent was to shake up the whole paradigm of the Middle East — to rock the foundations of Israel and to undermine the very concept of Zionism as a historical destiny. Fifty years later, there’s a good case to be made that he succeeded. Israel, after a shaky and scary start, emerged victorious from the Yom Kippur War, and what commenced after that is what become known, in international diplomacy and an infinite number of Thomas L. Friedman columns, as “the peace process.”

The key word in that phrase was “process.” Everyone in his or her right mind wants peace, but the essence of the Middle East “peace process” is that it would be a kind of system, mapped out by forces (and nations) large and small, in which if you carefully built one step in front of another, all the parties involved could, theoretically, ascend to a peaceful happy ending.

That it never seemed to work out that way didn’t deter the peace-process believers. They had a goal, as well as a mythology, which said that Israel was a good and democratic nation surrounded by hostile neighbors. There is truth to that mythology, but it has never been the whole truth. It leaves out realities largely suppressed by Western media about the formation of Israel in 1948, a cataclysm dealt with incisively in last year’s Israeli documentary “Tantura.” It leaves out the fundamental contradiction, discussed by Peter Beinart just yesterday in The New York Times, between the concept of Israel as a Jewish State and the concept of Israel as a democracy. The “peace process” never worked — not really — because it was always, beneath the rhetoric, an elaborate stopgap masquerading as a mystic pathway to resolution. And the Yom Kippur War marked the first time that the Arab world, freshly armed by the Soviets in a way that it wasn’t during the 1967 war, asserted its place in a new balance of power.

The specter of that was read by Israel, quite rightly, as an existential threat. And part of what makes “Golda” a tense and absorbing backroom docudrama is that you feel that primal fear. Meir first hears about the drums of war from Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan), the director-general of the Mossad, who discusses the massing of Egyptian troops. But the signals are ambiguous, and it turns out later that the reason for that is that the Mossad’s multi-million-dollar listening system was “switched off.” This sounds, on the face of it, like some bizarre Jewish domestic joke (“How many times do I have to tell you not to leave the lights on?”), but the upshot is that the Israelis are caught off guard.

The film presents Israel as a victim of its own hubris, going back to the 1967 victory that, ironically, laid the groundwork for so many of the problems that beset Israel today (the 2007 documentary “Six Days” examines this paradox with essential insight). At the same time, the film presents Egypt and Syria as victims of their own hubris, fatally hovering between tactical victories and the larger dream of smashing Israel. At key moments, Mirren’s Golda summons a mercilessness worthy of a gangster (the actor knows just how to understate a line like “Teach our enemies a lesson they’ll never forget”). But she’s always aware of the larger forces at work; in certain ways, the entire conflict is a proxy war between the U.S. and the Soviets.

Lurking in the background is Henry Kissinger, the flinty voice of tough-love American loyalty, played by Liev Schreiber in a performance that nails Kissinger’s croaky geopolitical steeliness but could have used a touch of his Peter Sellers grin. When Kissinger finally comes to Israel to meet with Meir in her home and seal a cease-fire agreement, the two square off like old friends who are remaking their terms of endearment. “Golda” roots us in the combat detail of the Yom Kippur War, and that’s part of its dynamism as a movie. That very effectiveness, however, is tied to a limitation. The film is told from the Israeli point-of-view, which makes perfect sense given that it’s a moment-in-time biopic of Golda Meir. Yet it ends on a note of faith in the peace process that now looks borderline ahistorical. “Golda” is a good drama about Israel. But it will take a great drama about Israel to dig into the nation’s long-simmering moral ambiguities.      

Reviewed at Park Ave. Screening Room (Berlin Film Festival), Feb. 17, 2023. MPA rating: PG-13. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: A Hianlo, New Native Pictures, Qwerty Films, Perfume Films production. Producers: Michael Kuhn, Nicholas Martin, Jane Hooks.
• Crew: Director: Guy Nattiv. Screenplay: Nicholas Martin. Camera: Jasper Wolf. Editor: Arak Lahav-Leibovich. Music: Dascha Dauenhauer.
• With: Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Camille Cottin, Ellie Piercy, Rami Heuberger, Lior Ashkenazi, Rotem Keinan, Dvir Benedek, Dominic Mafham, Ed Stoppard.

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Movie Review: Filmmakers behind biopic ‘Golda,’ starring Helen Mirren, get lost in a swirl of smoke

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Camille Cottin, left, and Helen Mirren as Golda Meir in a scene from. the film “Golda.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Helen Mirren as Golda Meir in a scene from. the film “Golda.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Liev Schreiber in a scene from. the film “Golda.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, left, and Liev Schreiber in a scene from. the film “Golda.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Rotem Keinan, left, and Helen Mirren, as Golda Meir, in a scene from. the film “Golda.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

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Golda Meir was many things — modern Israel’s first and only female head of government and a wartime prime minister. And she now she’s provided the vehicle for Helen Mirren to try to earn some more acting awards.

The great English actor dons prosthetics and an air of sourness in “Golda” to portray Meir facing two tragedies by fire — leading Israel’s counterattack in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war while also undergoing cancer treatment.

The war’s outcome laid the groundwork for a peace agreement, but Israel suffered heavy losses and Meir was criticized for the government’s lack of preparation and slowness to act on intelligence indicating an attack was imminent. She resigned the following year.

Director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin don’t have much to say about Meir’s childhood or early adulthood in “Golda.” We find her very late in life, with terrible decisions to make as Israel is attacked on the holy day of Yom Kippur from two sides. This movie is mostly a snapshot of a few demanding weeks.

The filmmakers have seized on one recurring — and eventually irritating — image: smoke. Meir was a chain-smoker and that has given them license to have her lighting up at every turn; the crack of metal lighters and burning of paper seem to end every scene. There is even a half-hearted attempt to combine her cigarette smoke with artillery fire from the front lines, a dubious effort at best.

It’s not clear why smoking is so important to the filmmakers. Perhaps it’s to show Meir’s stubbornness or single-mindedness or stress release — she even smokes on the hospital table while enduring treatment for lymphoma — but it just becomes a filmmaking crutch, like real nicotine.

Mirren — following in the sturdy, lace-up work shoes of previous Meir actors like Anne Bancroft, Judy Davis and Tovah Feldshuh — does an admirable job lurching from war meeting to war meeting and tossing off great lines like: “All political careers end in failure” and “I will not be taken alive.” (Mirren has so far largely avoided the criticism that Bradley Cooper has faced for playing Leonard Bernstein, though they are both non-Jews using prosthetics.)

But the script gives Mirren little insight into what is going on inside Meir. We watch her diligently note each soldier and equipment loss in a little notebook and have panic attacks, yet what the war means to her is lost in prosthetics, the clicking of typewriters and wisps of smoke.

Another ham-fisted way the filmmakers try to instill empathy in their Meir is, bizarrely, through one of the stenographers whose son is fighting in the Suez Canal. While the men blithely natter on about troop movements and casualties, Meir will glance at the stenographer, sadly.

Liev Schreiber is very good as an amused Henry Kissinger — her few scenes with him give a welcome jolt to the movie — and Camille Cottin is very strong as Meir’s patient aide, washing her back and administering soup and medicine.

“Golda” has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

There is one moment that punctures Mirren’s dour portrayal, and it comes at the very end. The credits feature footage of the real Golda Meir, smiling and laughing with Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat. Here, finally, is the complex, multidimensional woman Mirren had been chasing but failed to land.

“Golda,” a Bleecker Street release that is in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for “thematic material and pervasive smoking.” Running time: 100 minutes. Two stars out of four.

MPA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/golda

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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‘golda’ review: helen mirren makes a commanding golda meir in square but serviceable biopic.

This historical drama about the Israeli prime minister, directed by Guy Nattiv ('Skin'), doesn't skimp on period fixtures and makes sure everyone smokes all the time.

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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However, the film is not just about her and this is not a biopic as such. Rather, it’s a dramatization of the events before during and a bit after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Directed by Israeli Guy Nattiv, whose powerful feature Skin about a reformed Neo Nazi impressed a few years back, Golda is one of those key-moment-in-world-events films that aims to deliver both a potted history lesson and an award-curious showcase for its lead actor. Think Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour , or Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. The bones of Meir’s biography have been far less picked over by the movies than Churchill or Lincoln’s so this leaves Nattiv, Mirren and Golda scope to build Meir up as a dramatic character, subverting the grandmotherly image many Americans who remember her still have. At the same time, showing her as frail and vulnerable at the time the story takes place humanizes a figure who has been called the Iron Lady well before Thatcher took over that tag.

In fact, there is so much smoking in this film it sometimes feels like a specialized fetish entertainment for tobacco addicts. Mirren cannily uses the way Golda smokes as a means to illustrate character. The way she handles a hefty Zippo lighter denotes competency and command, and at one point a couple of packs of cigarettes and two lighters stand in for battling army divisions as she and her generals discuss tactics over a map. The passage of time is measured in the fullness of ashtrays. Cigarettes are sometimes like guns in Golda’s hands, lit and loaded. They’re part of her arsenal and her armor just like the frumpy grandmother’s sweaters and Victorian shoes. Nattiv and DP Jasper Wolf ( Monos ; Bodies, Bodies, Bodies ) love to set the camera from weird angles or wafting above the action like an angel looking down, and at one point a great cloud of smoke rises up from Golda as she lays in bed, completely obscuring her head from view. She’s a dragon lady, almost literally.

The intense visuals find a complement in Dascha Dauenhauer’s striking score and Niv Adiri’s sound design that mixes the Noh-theatre-style percussion with the crackle of short-wave radio conversations. A lot of the film watches on as Meir and the generals listen in to the sound of men dying on the battlefield as they play cat and mouse with the Egyptians and Syrians. There’s no blood on display but the agony and pain is embedded in the very soundscape itself.

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Review: Helen Mirren is ‘Golda’ in her most desperate hour

The oscar-winning actor portrays israeli prime minister golda meir as she agonizes over decisions and spars with henry kissinger during the 1973 yom kippur war..

Helen Mirren portrays Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973 in the biopic “Golda.”

There’s been a  raging debate about Bradley Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to play composer Leonard Bernstein after photos from the production of his fall biopic “Maestro” were released last week. But there has been no such backlash regarding Helen Mirren’s heavy prosthetics to play former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in “Golda.”

And rightly so.

To be clear, the issue of cultural appropriation is a legitimate discussion to have. It is a main source of debate about Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and it is an issue that should have been reckoned with decades ago.

In Cooper’s case, he was accused by some of “Jewface,” which is perceived to advance antisemitic stereotypes. For Cooper, who is not Jewish, the issue was authenticity, and Bernstein’s children and the Anti-Defamation League have since risen to his defense.

Golda Meir (Helen Mirren, left) and Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) meet in “Golda,” which takes place during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

But here, Mirren (the Paramount+ series “1923,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and the narrator of “Barbie,” all in 2023) portrays Meir in her darkest days at the height of the 1973 Yom Kippur War with empathy and loving subtlety. It’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better, and this is territory that was once mined by Ingrid Bergman in a 1982 miniseries, “A Woman Called Golda.”

The 19-day war, in which Israel was attacked by a coalition of Arab countries led by Anwar Sadat’s Egypt, led to heavy Israeli casualties and threatened the existence of the country itself. Many of Meir’s decisions were questioned, beginning with her refusal to launch a preemptive strike once plans for an Arab attack were discovered by Israeli intelligence. Part of “Golda” is set in 1974, when Meir, who had recently resigned, faced an investigation into her role in the Israeli prosecution of the war.

Golda Meir (Helen Mirren, left) and David “Dado” Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi) discuss battle plans in “Golda,” which takes place during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

“Golda,” like “ Oppenheimer ,” is a dialogue-heavy war film set mostly in rooms — conference rooms, underground command centers and Meir’s house, all in a cloud of constant smoke, as Meir was a champion chain-smoker. Israeli-born director Guy Nattiv, working from a sharp script from Nicholas Martin, expertly mixes in documentary footage to convey a sense of the times and the war. In some scenes, Nattiv is confident enough to let the real  Golda Meir appear in footage, with cutaways to Mirren.

The supporting cast, led by French actress Camille Cottin ( “Stillwater,” Netflilx’s “Call My Agent!”) as Lou Kaddar, Meir’s personal assistant and closest friend, is excellent and understated. For those who lived through the times, many familiar names appear: the eye-patched defense minister Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger) and future prime minister Ariel Sharon (Ohad Knoller) among them.

Lou Kadar (Camille Cottin, left) is the personal assistant and close friend of 30 years of Golda Meir (Helen Mirren) in “Golda.”

Then there’s Liev Schreiber’s fun-to-watch turn as Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, the silver-tongued strategist conveying the United States’ interests during a threatened Arab oil embargo.

Never mind that Schreiber is 6-foot-3 and would have towered over the diminutive Kissinger. In “Golda,” Meir’s biggest gamble is standing up to Kissinger. What happened next changed the course of Middle East history.

Reach G. Allen Johnson: [email protected]

Helen Mirren in “Golda.”

G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

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Golda Review

06 Oct 2023

Getting to be Prime Minister is one thing, but have you ever smoked more cigarettes than anyone else who ever lived? Golda Meir — in this film at least — unlocks both achievements. Secretly suffering from lymphoma and not doing too well, the Israeli PM (Helen Mirren) regardless smokes at every available opportunity. She inhales nicotine like it’s oxygen, chugging anytime, anywhere, everywhere. She smokes in bed, in her living-room, in cars, in her office, on the roof and just for good measure in hospital, even as she’s lying down seconds before receiving radiation treatment. She is never without a fag, frequently engulfed in a cancerous mist.

The filmmakers are drawing on research here — Meir indeed was a committed chain-smoker — but director Guy Nattiv pounces on her habit, surrounding her in a swirl wherever she goes, making it the biggest of cinematic traits, utilising it to signify what she might be thinking and feeling as her country’s at war. Let alone the wilful self-destruction.

A noble attempt to create a character study while not quite bringing its subject to life

There’s a lot more where that came from in Golda , where unsubtle symbolism also takes the form of insects, birds and blood. It’s a bit much, and a strange old stew, a film that strives to be artful whilst never feeling particularly dynamic; a noble attempt to create a character study while not quite bringing its subject to life. Nevertheless, it’s a compelling enough portrait of a complex clusterfuck.

We meet the 75-year-old Meir in October 1973, as Israel is about to be attacked by Egypt and Syria. Government intelligence suggests something’s going to happen, but for fear of international reprisals she refuses to make a pre-emptive strike, and Israel gets battered. Then follows a blow-by-blow account of the 20-day Yom Kippur War, here played out behind closed doors, in Meir’s offices and war room. Other than one aerial sequence, Nattiv doesn’t show us the battles — instead we hear them, via genuine archival audio recordings from the frontline, Meir and her team listening aghast as troops are killed. It’s upsetting stuff.

Golda shaves some edges off its subject matter — this is all about Meir, with any other perspectives kept to a minimum if not missing entirely. It’s chiefly about Meir’s tenacity and grief, and Mirren, forthright and spiky, channels that well — or as well as she can with a mediocre screenplay. It is very much a movie Meir, all rather studied, the film never truly getting under her skin (although that skin itself, authentically lived-in, is fantastic, courtesy of brilliant make-up artist Karen Hartley Thomas and prosthetic artist Ashra Kelly-Blue). It is both overwrought and undramatic, yet Mirren’s deeply felt performance, and the film’s insistence on intimacy, do enough heavy lifting: despite its shortcomings, Golda is quietly affecting.

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When the movie “Golda” was first announced, it sounded like surefire Oscar gold. 

An embattled historical figure, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, was to be played by Helen Mirren, the celebrated British actress who won an Academy Award for portraying Queen Elizabeth II at one of the monarch’s lowest moments in life. 

Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (thematic material and pervasive smoking). In theaters August 25.

But much as Mirren’s Meir is caught off-guard by Egypt and Syria’s attack on Israel at the start of the movie — the first strike of the 1973 Yom Kippur War — I was unpleasantly surprised by how poorly made “Golda” turned out to be.

Directed by Guy Nattiv, the sluggish film caves to the worst tendencies of forgettable biopics. Mirren is ensconced in prosthetics and a gray wig in hopes that a lookalike transformation can distract from bad writing and a total lack of insight. 

Predictably, the caked-on makeup doesn’t make up for the movie’s many flaws.

Game though she is, the actress never stops being Helen Mirren in a mask. She’s not a real person, but a dame in disguise. 

Her so-so performance is weighed down all the more by a disappointing dearth of context about this fascinating woman. “Golda” is set solely during the 19-day Yom Kippur War, a painful and consequential time for Israel, and is mostly depicted through undramatic strategy sessions between Meir, generals and advisors across only a few small rooms. It’s a cheap-looking movie.

Of course, choosing a small-but-mighty moment in a subject’s life isn’t always a rotten choice. 

Mirren’s superb “The Queen” took place during the mournful days after Princess Diana’s death, and the electrifying “Frost/Nixon,” starring Frank Langella, showed Richard Nixon during his bombshell interviews with David Frost post-presidency.

But a lot more movies and TV shows have been made about Elizabeth II and Nixon than there are about Meir. It would be nice to get to know her.

The viewer would understand and care more about her actions during the war if we delved deeper into her early life in the Russian Empire and Wisconsin before she came to the Middle East.

Here, she briefly speaks to Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) about her childhood trauma toward the end, but by then the film has already flatlined.

For the most part, the role is written and performed as steely and resolute. Such was Meir’s public reputation. Her only vulnerability we witness is that she is dying from cancer, and therefore makes frequent doctor visits in secret and starts losing her hair in the bathtub. She demolishes packs of cigarettes, and Nattiv’s only directorial flair is filming the billowing smoke.

It’s easy to forget there are any other actors in the film, as they are a lineup of Mr. Cellophanes.

Their roles are criminally underwritten and contribute little to the story but basic exposition. Even Schreiber’s Kissinger is an afterthought.

The closest anybody comes to having an emotional life is French actress Camille Cottin as Meir’s supportive secretary Lou Kaddar. Cottin, brilliant on the TV series “Call My Agent,” has a forceful presence that easily announces itself. Still, there is only so much she can do here. There is a fantastic English-language movie somewhere in this performer’s future. 

Unfortunately, the same is true of a brilliant movie about Golda Meir. 

Eventually, somebody will make one.

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All people want to talk about with Golda , the stodgy biography of former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, is the cosmetics. The issue is the heavy make-up worn by star Helen Mirren, which sparked heated discussion of whether gentile actors should play Jewish characters. Word-counts and life are short. That hot potato can go cold without me. But the hoo-ha was surely not the plan of Tel Aviv-born filmmaker Guy Nattiv. Consider it a lesson in living by the sword. His Golda is so skin-deep, it only feels right it should be judged on aesthetics.

The film is a snapshot of a leader at what should be breaking point. By odd coincidence, the timeframe is exactly that of the urgent new documentary 20 Days in Mariupol : the 20 days of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, fought between Israel and Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. Unlike the Ukraine war, a grudging ceasefire followed, though with huge casualties on both sides. Meir would later be subject to an Israeli inquiry over her role in allowing the country to be attacked, which Golda uses as a framing device.

The movie’s Meir faces these trials as she does all else, with a cigarette in hand. Sometimes two. The only person more hooked than Meir is Nattiv, for whom smoke is as vital as Mirren. A tobacco shroud hangs over every scene, to symbolic effect. It obscures the fact that other parts of the visual design are smart, if relentlessly stylised. Lack of time and options is reflected in tight little war rooms. But the script is repetitive too, dense with statistics and clichés.

Like Meir, a lot is being asked of Mirren. Never less than compelling, her work here feels true from scene to scene. (At least one is great: Henry Kissinger, outwitted over borscht.) But even this star needs more to crack the central mystery. Many other young Jewish girls saw friends and families terrorised by Cossacks in the 1900s. Only one became Golda Meir. Why? The movie leaves the question lost in that digital fog.

In UK cinemas from October 6

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Golda Reviews

This is not a flattering portrayal of Golda, but an indecisive one.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 18, 2024

Unfortunately, after half an hour it abandons all its dramatic force and reduces the presence of the Iron Lady to that of an artificial caricature that consumes itself like the ashes of a cigarette. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 23, 2024

There are films that only make sense, that justify one viewing – in this case, just one – thanks to their leading actress. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 18, 2023

Golda is not a good film, but an often incomprehensible and undramatic gibberish of war strategy and army movement, articulated with somewhat stale formal grandiloquence... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 18, 2023

Guy Nattiv's new film starring Helen Mirren offers an account of the Yom Kippur War through the perspective of Golda Meir. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 14, 2023

Golda undercuts its intentions of being a gripping drama of Israeli leader Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War, by showing her as a mostly aloof politician making decisions in safe office rooms. Helen Mirren is not completely convincing as Meir.

Full Review | Nov 18, 2023

Golda isn’t a failure of skill, but one of vision.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2023

The film itself describes Golda as a hero outside of Israel and controversial in her own land, and it does well enough in embodying that very same controversy.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.2/10 | Oct 29, 2023

Nattiv’s understated direction brings to mind Tomas Alfredson’s understated adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The shadow of Le Carré does loom large, which may be attributable to Nicholas Martin’s thoughtful script.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2023

Golda is more like a chapter of a dusty history book than an invigorating, timely glimpse into the past.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 10, 2023

... The battles are relayed via satellite to Meir’s cabinet room, where clouds of cigarette smoke stand in for the fog of war — but Mirren is a mensch, commanding a war despite her swollen ankles.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2023

... The screenplay gets terribly bogged down in dialogue between politicians in smoke-filled rooms.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 9, 2023

Golda lives in the shadow of the film it wants to be, but Mirren’s warm performance and the claustrophobia of it all make it linger regardless.

Never less than compelling, her [Helen Mirren] work here feels true from scene to scene. But even this star needs more to crack the central mystery.

There’s a stifling quality to this portrait of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren, encased in spongy-looking layers of prosthetics), even before she has filled every frame with a fug of secondhand smoke.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2023

Film probably not the ideal medium for this fascinating but complex episode.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 5, 2023

Mostly, though, the film struggles to bring the complexities of this period to life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 3, 2023

Saddled with a near-impossible task of conveying the complexities of Israeli politics in this period, Nattiv doesn’t really conquer this nor Meir, despite deploying the mighty Mirren.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 27, 2023

Throughout the movie, Mirren’s pivotal performance as Meir is mesmerizing. The moments, the era, the history are all revealed in unique cinematic ways. Mirren is the audience’s guide, and you wouldn’t want anyone else leading you.

Full Review | Sep 25, 2023

...an often astonishingly dry endeavor that contains few, if any, appealing attributes and elements...

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 23, 2023

August 24, 2023

Movies for the Rest of Us

Review: Golda — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Helen Mirren proves again she is in full control of the thespian’s tool kit.

Bill Newcott

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Rating: PG-13

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Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Stars: Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Camille Cottin

Writer: Nicholas Martin

Director: Guy Nattiv

The most startling sound in Golda , a taut and magnificently acted drama set during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, is not that of gunshots, nor cannon fire, nor screaming soldiers, although there is plenty of that.

Instead, the aural sequence that will stick with you long after the final credits have rolled is one that’s nearly extinct nowadays: The metallic click of an opening cigarette lighter, the scratch of a spark wheel, the sizzle of fire igniting paper and tobacco, the tiny clang of the lid flipping closed.

It may be impossible to count the number of times Helen Mirren, channeling chain smoking Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, enacts that little ritual in Golda ’s speedy 100 minutes. But there’s no underestimating the skill with which she does it: click, scratch, sizzle, clang…click, scratch, sizzle, clang . A counterpoint to Dascha Dauenhauer’s haunting musical score, the song of Golda’s lighter punctuates every scene of the film; a leitmotif that, in the hands of a masterful actor, manages to convey shades of authority, frustration, fear, and vulnerability.

Grandmotherly, brusque Golda Meir — born in Ukraine, raised in Milwaukee, forged on an Israeli kibbutz — remains one of the most intriguing yet little-examined figures of the 20th century. As the film notes in an afterword, while most of the world saw Meir as a political giant, Israelis held a more complicated view of her.

“Just remember,” the film’s Golda tells a young Ariel Sharon, “every political career ends in failure.”

Before Margaret Thatcher assumed the title, it was Meir who was proclaimed the political world’s Iron Lady. A woman in a man’s realm, she stared down political adversaries for decades in one of the planet’s most volatile regions, rising to her nation’s top position in the wake of the Six-Day War.

Golda opens with Meir, now retired from office, facing down yet another group of judgmental men: a panel convened to determine if she should assume blame for the large number of casualties Israel suffered in the course of the Yom Kippur conflict.

If the viewer has a bit of trouble concentrating on these proceedings, it’s understandable: We’re still catching our breath from our first look at Mirren as Meir, whose deeply creased face, caterpillar-like eyebrows, and gray hair — somehow managing to be both straggly and severely pulled back — made her one of the most instantly recognizable figures of her time.

There’s no denying that Mirren — whose ageless beauty threatened to undermine her Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth in The Queen — faces a challenge here, acting from behind a prosthetic face that occasionally seems less like Cicely Tyson in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and more like Kim Hunter in Planet of the Apes .

But there’s more to acting than great cheekbones and a perky nose, and Mirren proves again she is in full control of the thespian’s tool kit. Wisely, prosthetics designer Suzi Battersby has found a way to give Mirren autonomy over her deeply expressive eyes, freeing the star to register exasperation with her inquisitors, shrewd calculation with Henry Kissinger (a pretty perfect Liev Schreiber), grief at the sight of a young office stenographer learning of her brother’s battle death, and affection for her loyal aide-de-camp (warm Camille Cottin).

Most strikingly, Mirren finds a way to evoke a universe of emotions as Meir listens in on battlefield transmissions during a catastrophic rout in the desert. Oscar-winning director Guy Nattiv (Live Action Short, 2019) and writer Nicholas Martin ( Florence Foster Jenkins) let us eavesdrop on the unfolding carnage, but I’m betting the scene would have been equally devastating had they chosen to simply show us Mirren’s eyes melting from hopefulness to despair to sheer horror.

Add to that Mirren’s adoption of a clipped, Midwestern delivery and the bent shuffle of a woman secretly enduring cobalt treatments for lymphoma (plus, of course, her virtuoso way with a cigarette lighter) and Mirren not only overcomes whatever limitations a heavily made-up face may impose — she transcends them.

It’s what great screen actors do.

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Terrific review! It certainly makes me want to see the film (and it is wonderful to see female actors being offered a wider range of roles….). But, also, how beautifully written! This passage was particularly gorgeous: “The metallic click of an opening cigarette lighter, the scratch of a spark wheel, the sizzle of fire igniting paper and tobacco, the tiny clang of the lid flipping closed.” Wonderful! It’s like a prose poem. Nicely done.

A good review of a great movie of a great leader.

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Helen Mirren plays it dour in the smoke-filled gloom of Golda Meir biopic

Constant clouds from cigarettes further obscure the film’s simplistic portrayal..

Helen Mirren (right, with Camille Cottin) plays Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in “Golda.”

Bleecker Street

Golda Meir was many things — modern Israel’s first and only female head of government and a wartime prime minister. And she now she’s provided the vehicle for Helen Mirren to try to earn some more acting awards.

The great English actor dons prosthetics and an air of sourness in “Golda” to portray Meir facing two tragedies by fire: leading Israel’s counterattack in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war while also undergoing cancer treatment.

The war’s outcome laid the groundwork for a peace agreement, but Israel suffered heavy losses and Meir was criticized for the government’s lack of preparation and slowness to act on intelligence indicating an attack was imminent. She resigned the following year.

Director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin don’t have much to say about Meir’s childhood or early adulthood in “Golda.” We find her very late in life, with terrible decisions to make as Israel is attacked on the holy day of Yom Kippur from two sides. This movie is mostly a snapshot of a few demanding weeks.

The filmmakers have seized on one recurring — and eventually irritating — image: smoke. Meir was a chain-smoker and that has given them license to have her lighting up at every turn; the crack of metal lighters and burning of paper seem to end every scene. There is even a half-hearted attempt to combine her cigarette smoke with artillery fire from the front lines, a dubious effort at best.

It’s not clear why smoking is so important to the filmmakers. Perhaps it’s to show Meir’s stubbornness or single-mindedness or stress release — she even smokes on the hospital table while enduring treatment for lymphoma — but it just becomes a filmmaking crutch, like real nicotine.

Mirren — following in the sturdy, lace-up work shoes of previous Meir actors like Anne Bancroft, Judy Davis and Tovah Feldshuh — does an admirable job lurching from war meeting to war meeting and tossing off great lines like: “All political careers end in failure” and “I will not be taken alive.” (Mirren has so far largely avoided the criticism that Bradley Cooper has faced for playing Leonard Bernstein, though they are both non-Jews using prosthetics.)

But the script gives Mirren little insight into what is going on inside Meir. We watch her diligently note each soldier and equipment loss in a little notebook and have panic attacks, yet what the war means to her is lost in prosthetics, the clicking of typewriters and wisps of smoke.

Another ham-fisted way the filmmakers try to instill empathy in their Meir is, bizarrely, through one of the stenographers whose son is fighting in the Suez Canal. While the men blithely natter on about troop movements and casualties, Meir will glance at the stenographer, sadly.

Liev Schreiber is very good as an amused Henry Kissinger — her few scenes with him give a welcome jolt to the movie — and Camille Cottin is very strong as Meir’s patient aide, washing her back and administering soup and medicine.

“Golda” has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

There is one moment that punctures Mirren’s dour portrayal, and it comes at the very end. The credits feature footage of the real Golda Meir, smiling and laughing with Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat. Here, finally, is the complex, multidimensional woman Mirren had been chasing but failed to land.

'Golda' Review: Helen Mirren Is Stuck in Stuffy Historical Drama

There is a chapter in history worth exploring here, but this film is not the one to do it.

This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist. Whenever a screen performer held in high esteem with a long career of outstanding work finds themselves trying to fight free of a slog of a film, there becomes something fascinating in watching their attempt. Even when they succeed, it just lays bare how the rest of the experience is itself not up to the challenge. Such is the case with the tedious historical drama that is Golda in which Helen Mirren plays the titular character in what amounts to, at best, an only serviceable impersonation of the ailing figure that is left with nowhere to go. Placing us primarily in the period of the Yom Kippur War followed by the subsequent questioning of Golda Meir about her role in it as Prime Minister of Israel, it is a film that is fundamentally inert with little to no interest in exploring any potentially incisive ideas about its subject or the period beyond the surface. The performance of Mirren, sporting prosthetics and a wig, embodies the film’s greatest problem: even if you get swept up in the recreation, it's in service of very little. Dressing up a dud doesn't make it any less of a dud when held up to the light.

Written by Nicholas Martin and directed by Guy Nattiv , who previously made the Oscar-winning short Skin , Golda is a film in which everything from the dialogue to the staging of the scenes is stodgy. It is not that the film mostly being talky is an issue as Christopher Nolan ’s colossal Oppenheimer from last month proved that something interesting can be found in the pace of the editing in how all this is constructed. The way that would cut across time made it feel like we were hurtling through memories towards disaster. Golda , on the other hand, is mostly a dull disaster as opposed to an exploration of one. While it was unlikely that it was going to be as engaging as that based on the more confined story it was setting out to tell, it still manages to feel slight rather than substantive. While many biopics can get lost in the shuffle of trying to cover too much in a single feature, Golda zooms in on what could've been a revealing period in its subject's life only to still fall into superficiality. The attempts to give it emotional heft, through interjections of what is taking place outside her orbit, are too fleeting to leave an impact and only feel like halfhearted gestures due to how quickly they pass.

RELATED: Helen Mirren and Gillian Anderson Revisit History in New 'White Bird' Trailer

Mirren Can’t Carry 'Golda' All on Her Own

The film attempts to lean on the performance of Mirren, who sure does smoke her cigarettes quite convincingly, but that is not enough to give it the necessary depth. The trouble just keeps coming back to how empty the experience is, feeling like a stiff play gasping out for some energy. Though Mirren has shown that she is more than capable of bringing life to works that may be lacking in it, that just isn’t enough to hold this one together. The best way to explain the experience of watching the film, which mostly takes place in smoke-filled rooms while Golda and a group of military men make decisions about the war over the course of several days of conflict, can be best expressed by a moment of a nightmare she experiences alone that becomes a bit of a visual metaphor. Laying back on her bed with her cigarette in hand, the leader exhales a cloud of smoke and the sound of death comes rushing in as she does so.

This non-diegetic insert, almost feeling familiar to elements of last year’s evocative and grim The Stranger , falls flat when she then sucks it all back in. Anything more potentially striking just gets swallowed up by the standard way everything else comes together. A more disquieting score, which could have taken hold like Mica Levi’ s did in Jackie , instead is still oddly held at a distance. The nightmares of the conflict that haunts Golda in her home, captured via a roaming camera as the constant ringing of the phones begins to reach deafening levels, feel like it is one of many instances that are being guided by an oddly clumsy hand. Its execution is meant to evoke fear and pain though it just comes across as bluntly banal. Toss in far too many other moments where the effects completely take you out of a scene and the film’s struggles become insurmountable for its committed performers.

'Golda' Is Insipid Rather Than Insightful

Also in the picture is Liev Schreiber 's portrayal of a middle-aged Henry Kissinger who talks with Golda on the phone before coming to visit her in person about an hour in. The scene the two share is the film’s best and feels like it is getting at something more, establishing how the world as we know it today is shaped by such conversations, especially when monstrous men like Kissinger are involved. The problem is that it just remains an incomplete portrait of Golda, whose legacy itself is a complicated one, and of the moment in time it is supposedly exploring. Some of the final conversations towards the end start to cut a little bit deeper, bringing parts of the person underneath the public figure into focus, though it comes too late to be of enough significance. It is mostly a drag with some potentially sharper small details never coming together to outweigh the dullness at its core. For those who may come to the film wanting to understand more of who Golda was and her role in history via a well-written character study, they’ll only end up departing it with all of those questions still lingering.

The Big Picture

• Golda is a tedious historical drama lacking substance and depth, despite Helen Mirren's performance.
• The film's dialogue, staging, and overall execution are stodgy and unengaging.
• While there are fleeting attempts to add emotional weight, the film ultimately falls flat and fails to provide meaningful insight into its subject or the period it covers.

Golda is in theaters starting August 25.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Golda (2023)

October 2, 2023 by Robert Kojder

Golda , 2023.

Directed by Guy Nattiv. Starring Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Camille Cottin, Lior Ashkenazi, Ellie Piercy, Ed Stoppard, Rotem Keinan, Dvir Benedek, Dominic Mafham, Kit Rakusen, Emma Davies, Mark Fleischmann, Daniel Ben Zenou, Muneesh Sharma, Sara Matin, Sam Shoubber, Zed Josef, Henry Goodman, Rami Heuberger, and Ben Caplan.

Focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, also known as the ‘Iron Lady of Israel’ faced during the Yom Kippur War.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Golda wouldn’t exist.

Far be it for me to be the authority on whether or not director Guy Nattiv’s and screenwriter Nicholas Martin’s Golda  is zionist propaganda or wholly accurate (I will leave those discussions to those well-versed in history and to those who have directly felt the impact and aftermath of the still ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which this film strangely seems to convey as resolved during its epilogue), but what is crystal clear is that the experience is much more effective when it focuses on the details of the battles that took place during the Yom Kippur War of the 1970s rather than overly sentimental, self-aggrandizing hagiography about the eponymous chainsmoking Israeli Prime Minister.

Played by long-standing veteran Helen Mirren, the film follows Golda Meir navigating the complicated and murky war room, immediate-consequence decisions that arise upon brushing off her gut and advice from an eye-patched military leader that Egyptian and Syrian forces will be combined with the aid of Russian assistance to press an attack with the hopes of leaving Israel vulnerable for a hostile takeover. As a result, roughly the first half of Golda (which encompasses all three weeks of this conflict) is fairly compelling, somewhat allowing itself to be critical of this leader and find faults within herself and the dysfunction within her staff shouting different orders in her direction.

Unfortunately, that also seems to be the extent the filmmakers are willing to go in searching for a balanced and measured examination of Golda Meir. The rest amounts to numerous overdramatic close-ups of the Iron Lady of Israel deep in thought, attempting to process the ongoing horrors (complete with frequent cutaways to battle footage meant to convey the visuals in her mind), sometimes getting as absurdly stylish as watching her cigarette smoke blow upward in slow motion for a prolonged effect intending to resemble the smoky aesthetics of a battlefield. None of this is intriguing, often taking away from the much more compelling sounds and reactions of a war room listening into their strategies playing out in real-time, sometimes to disaster and other times to winning effect.

To avoid confusion, Helen Mirren is also nowhere near terrible in this role; it’s just a misguided script that doesn’t seem too concerned with distinguishing Golda as a person. Her acting performance, especially when dealing with multiple strategies flying in her face at once, the pressures of not only being a woman in charge but also finding the conviction at any cost to persuade the rest of the world that she means deadly business as a leader when it comes to protecting her people, and weighing the moral consequences of her choices (while there are some successes, many people also die as a result of her orders, meaning that the film is also broken up with smaller sections of the Israeli prime minister on trial following the immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.)

As a history lesson, Golda is riveting. As a study of Golda Meir, it’s an underdeveloped, melodramatic mess (there’s an entirely useless epilogue in a hospital room driving this point home). Whether it’s truth or in good faith is also up for debate, and there is no denying that the film makes one want to seek more knowledge on the subject of not just the Yom Kippur War, but more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, what is really disappointing is the conflicting tones and purposes within the film itself.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Golda (2023) Movie Review: Strong Writing and Acting Transform Middle Eastern History Lesson into Taut Closed-Room Thriller

“Golda” reaffirms that feature-length biopics work best when zeroing in on particular episodes of a subject’s life instead of recapitulating their entire Wikipedia page. The historical drama , which premiered in February at the 2023 Berlinale and is helmed by “Skin” director Guy Nattiv, embeds us with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir inside smoke-filled strategy rooms during the tense several weeks that followed a combined Arab offensive on Yom Kippur, the Jewish calendar’s holiest day. Having already played Elizabeth I and II, as well as Catherine the Great, Oscar winner Helen Mirren sinks her teeth into another head-of-state role with gusto.

The movie opens in 1973, five years after Israel prevailed over its neighbors in the Six-Day War. The hangover of victory has left government officials slow to detect Syria and Egypt’s joint effort to reclaim the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Meir senses an attack is imminent but knows it will be politically disastrous to mobilize troops while Israelis are observing Kippur, only to be wrong. It doesn’t help that the tip is coming from an intelligence asset who recently passed along faulty information. At the same time, the reputational cost of idling in the face of a mounting invasion will cast her tenure in ignominy. “All political careers end in failure,” she presciently advises foolhardy general – and future PM – Ariel Sharon (Ohad Knoller). It’s a fate she’s learned to begrudgingly accept rather than one she intends to meet willingly. Undergoing radiation treatments for the lymphoma she would succumb to shortly after the war, she instructs her aide (Camille Cottin) to ensure no one gets a chance to capture her alive.

Complicating strategic calculus further is the Nixon administration’s inflexibility as it deals with the fallout from Watergate. Liev Schreiber is stolid and dryly funny as Henry Kissinger, whose willingness to assist is tempered by the fear that too strong a show of U.S. support will alienate America’s oil suppliers in Saudi Arabia and drive them straight into the Soviets’ open arms. Riveting, dialogue-heavy scenes of Meir locked in deliberation with her advisors efficiently allude to broader Cold War-era concerns without ever stalling the main narrative’s momentum. Mirren’s scenes with Schreiber provide the majority of the film’s comic relief. The rest comes courtesy of her pleas for Cottin’s character to slip her a cigarette. The French actress, whom Americans may recognize from appearances in Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater” and Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” does fine work as the most fiercely loyal and honest person in Meir’s circle.

Rami Heuberger also impresses as shell-shocked Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan. Initially skeptical of a security threat, he undergoes a visceral shift of mind. It’s a small but crucial role with a range disproportionate to its screentime. But it’s Ellie Piercy, playing a typist with a son in the military, who does the most with a minor part. When the inevitable news does arrive, Piercy devastates in an extended close-up that elevates what is otherwise a stock role meant to put a human face on the personal toll of war.

As for Ms. Mirren, what’s there to really say? She’s great, of course. Did an internet-manufactured controversy ever make you seriously doubt that she would be? Mirren nails the PM’s unmistakable gait and the midwestern drawl that reveals hints of her early upbringing in Ukraine (Meir’s family fled anti-Semitism and settled in Wisconsin when she was six). Interspersed archival clips, both real and simulated, lend the portrayal additional credence (though when it comes to former Secretary of State Kissinger, seeing actual footage of him moments before a 6’3” Schreiber towers over everyone in the frame does result in a bit of unintended amusement). Mirren’s performance is definitely what you would call “baity,” but the movie’s middling reviews, Bleecker Street label, and late-August release will almost certainly keep her out of contention for a fifth Oscar nomination. Focus Features, which handled “Darkest Hour” in 2017, could’ve probably given this a push. But “Golda’s” distributor is the least of its liabilities.

Nattiv’s stylistic flourishes are more redolent of a first-time filmmaker’s bag of tricks than a seasoned artist in full command of his craft. While permitting visual variety, they mostly just cheapen the overall presentation. Segments intended to expressionistically illustrate Meir’s psychological turmoil, though no more hamfisted than similar moments in the recently released and widely acclaimed “Oppenheimer,” could’ve been easily dispensed with. While individual shots from DP Jasper Wolf are commendable (his work on “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is that film’s most interesting element), they never quite form a shared language. By the end, the movie feels like a competently made BBC drama instead of one warranting the big-screen treatment. But when it comes to condensing history into an entertaining, digestible package, “Golda” gets the job done.

Read More: Where to Watch & Stream the new drama movie ‘Golda’ starring Helen Mirren?

Golda (2023) movie links: imdb , rotten tomatoes , wikipedia golda (2023) movie cast: helen mirren, camille cottin, liev schreiber, lior ashkenazi, dvir benedek golda (2023) movie genre: history/drama, runtime: 1h 40m, where to watch golda, trending right now.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Biography/History , Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• July 25, 2023
• Helen Mirren as Golda Meir; Henry Goodman as Chairman Agranat; Camille Cottin as Lou Kaddar; Lior Ashkenazi as David “Dado” Elazar; Rami Heuberger as Moshe Dayan; Live Schreiber as Henry Kissinger; Zed Josef as Adam Snir; Dvir Benedek as Eli Zeira; Ed Stoppard as Benny Peled; Dominic Mafham as Haim Bar-Lev

Home Release Date

• September 19, 2023

Distributor

• Bleecker Street Media

Movie Review

It’s 1973. In Israel, war looms on the horizon.

War, of course, has loomed (and raged) ever since the nation was reborn in 1948. But it’s left Prime Minister Golda Meir with a difficult choice.

Israeli intelligence shows at least a million Egyptian and Syrian troops converging on the country’s borders from the southwest and northeast, respectively. But those in charge of an Israeli response don’t agree on how serious the threat is. After all, their eavesdropping system hasn’t picked up any chatter regarding plans for war, and it’s supposed to provide them with at least a 48-hour warning.

As for Golda, she would consider a preemptive strike were it not for both the division among her informants and her desire to keep a promise to the U.S. that Israel would not resort to that measure. Still, she must make a decision regarding how many troops to send in response to Egypt and Syria’s provocation.

It’s a pivotal decision for Golda Meir—one that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

Positive Elements

It is apparent that Golda takes every dead Israeli soldier very seriously. Each time she’s told of the number of the deceased, she writes the number down in a personal book. She clearly blames their deaths on her choices, and she says as much near the end of the film. With that in mind, she doesn’t make any choice lightly. She knows everything she decides may result in more death.

At the same time, Golda grapples with what must be done to achieve victory, contemplating whether she’s strong enough to be the ultimate cause of many deaths, even deaths of Israel’s enemies. She views casualties on both sides primarily in terms of “widows and orphans” left behind rather than characterizing those battles as either victories and losses.

Spiritual Elements

The war is dubbed the Yom Kippur War, in reference to the day that the war started. Yom Kippur, meaning Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in Judaism, on which Jews repent and ask God for forgiveness of their sins.

Someone describes a battlefield as like “heading into hell.”

Sexual Content

Golda takes a bath, though nothing is seen.

Violent Content

We do see plenty of explosions on a battlefield, and we listen to panicked voices on the front lines via radio. Later, we also listen to some troops as they’re ambushed. We don’t see anything, but we hear their terrified cries for help as they are eventually killed. We also hear such cries of terror when Golda suffers through night terrors and anxiety attacks.

Golda tells a story of intoxicated men who would murder Jewish people for fun.

As Golda listens to a military ambush against Israel take place, she presses her fingernails into her hands, drawing blood. Golda has lymphoma, we learn, and she spits up blood as the cancer gets worse, and we see her receiving medical treatment. Later, she passes away in a hospital bed.

A couple shots show a morgue full of bodies; we only glimpse the feet of the deceased sticking out from under a blanket. We also see dozens of dead birds in a hallway.

Crude or Profane Language

The s-word is used once. “H—” is used three times, and “d–n” is used once. God’s name is used in vain once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Golda has a cigarette in hand in most scenes, even taking a quick puff or two during hospital treatments for her lymphoma. She also takes prescription medication. Golda mentions Richard Nixon’s frequent drinking. Characters have celebratory drinks.

Other Negative Elements

Someone boasts about the power of an eavesdropping system, saying “when [Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat] breaks wind, I hear it first.” A man vomits.

Golda doesn’t depict soldiers dodging bullets and performing acts of heroism. Instead, it grapples with the darkness of this violent chapter of Middle Eastern history.

The Yom Kippur War may have ended in an Israeli victory, but it stunned Golda and her country all the same, revealing that they had become complacent following multiple victories in earlier conflicts—most notably the Six-Day War.

According to Mapam leader Ya’akov Hazan , Golda Meir contemplated suicide in the early days of the Yom Kippur War, “because she could not bear the thought of her moral responsibility for the pre-war unpreparedness.” And while we don’t see her grapple with that notion, the story does focus on how the conflict deeply affected this Israeli leader.

Even as she sits in relative safety in Tel Aviv, Golda cannot distance her mind from the front lines. She tallies each Israeli death in a personal notebook, and they all weigh heavily on her heart. And as we sit with her through the month-long war, we understand a bit of the pain she felt.

The worst onscreen violence we see is when Golda pierces her own hand with her fingernails. That said, offscreen violence can still feel very intense as we listen to the panicked screams of soldiers just before their enemies kill them.

Golda stays relatively clean for a war movie, focusing on how war affects the people who make its decisions as well as acting as a somber memorial to Golda Meir herself.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

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‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

In Alex Garland’s tough new movie, a group of journalists led by Kirsten Dunst, as a photographer, travels a United States at war with itself.

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‘Civil War’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director alex garland narrates a sequence from his film..

“My name is Alex Garland and I’m the writer director of ‘Civil War’. So this particular clip is roughly around the halfway point of the movie and it’s these four journalists and they’re trying to get, in a very circuitous route, from New York to DC, and encountering various obstacles on the way. And this is one of those obstacles. What they find themselves stuck in is a battle between two snipers. And they are close to one of the snipers and the other sniper is somewhere unseen, but presumably in a large house that sits over a field and a hill. It’s a surrealist exchange and it’s surrounded by some very surrealist imagery, which is they’re, in broad daylight in broad sunshine, there’s no indication that we’re anywhere near winter in the filming. In fact, you can kind of tell it’s summer. But they’re surrounded by Christmas decorations. And in some ways, the Christmas decorations speak of a country, which is in disrepair, however silly it sounds. If you haven’t put away your Christmas decorations, clearly something isn’t going right.” “What’s going on?” “Someone in that house, they’re stuck. We’re stuck.” “And there’s a bit of imagery. It felt like it hit the right note. But the interesting thing about that imagery was that it was not production designed. We didn’t create it. We actually literally found it. We were driving along and we saw all of these Christmas decorations, basically exactly as they are in the film. They were about 100 yards away, just piled up by the side of the road. And it turned out, it was a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival, and he’d gone bankrupt. And he had decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field, who was then absolutely furious. So in a way, there’s a loose parallel, which is the same implication that exists within the film exists within real life.” “You don’t understand a word I say. Yo. What’s over there in that house?” “Someone shooting.” “It’s to do with the fact that when things get extreme, the reasons why things got extreme no longer become relevant and the knife edge of the problem is all that really remains relevant. So it doesn’t actually matter, as it were, in this context, what side they’re fighting for or what the other person’s fighting for. It’s just reduced to a survival.”

By Manohla Dargis

A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. In Washington, D.C., the president is holed up in the White House; in a spookily depopulated New York, desperate people wait for water rations. It’s the near-future, and rooftop snipers, suicide bombers and wild-eyed randos are in the fight while an opposition faction with a two-star flag called the Western Forces, comprising Texas and California — as I said, this is speculative fiction — is leading the charge against what remains of the federal government. If you’re feeling triggered, you aren’t alone.

It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right. It’s one thing when a movie taps into childish fears with monsters under the bed; you’re eager to see what happens because you know how it will end (until the sequel). Adult fears are another matter.

In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. A pop cultural savant, he made a splashy zeitgeist-ready debut with his 1996 best seller “The Beach,” a novel about a paradise that proves deadly, an evergreen metaphor for life and the basis for a silly film . That things in the world are not what they seem, and are often far worse, is a theme that Garland has continued pursuing in other dark fantasies, first as a screenwriter (“ 28 Days Later ”), and then as a writer-director (“ Ex Machina ”). His résumé is populated with zombies, clones and aliens, though reliably it is his outwardly ordinary characters you need to keep a closer watch on.

By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. It’s unclear as to why the war started or who fired the first shot. Garland does scatter some hints; in one ugly scene, a militia type played by a jolting, scarily effective Jesse Plemons asks captives “what kind of American” they are. Yet whatever divisions preceded the conflict are left to your imagination, at least partly because Garland assumes you’ve been paying attention to recent events. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

‘Civil War’ Is Designed to Disturb You

One thing that remains familiar amid these ruins is the movie’s old-fashioned faith in journalism. Dunst, who’s sensational, plays Lee, a war photographer who works for Reuters alongside her friend, a reporter, Joel (the charismatic Wagner Moura). They’re in New York when you meet them, milling through a crowd anxiously waiting for water rations next to a protected tanker. It’s a fraught scene; the restless crowd is edging into mob panic, and Lee, camera in hand, is on high alert. As Garland’s own camera and Joel skitter about, Lee carves a path through the chaos, as if she knows exactly where she needs to be — and then a bomb goes off. By the time it does, an aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is also in the mix.

The streamlined, insistently intimate story takes shape once Lee, Joel, Jessie and a veteran reporter, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), pile into a van and head to Washington. Joel and Lee are hoping to interview the president (Nick Offerman), and Sammy and Jessie are riding along largely so that Garland can make the trip more interesting. Sammy serves as a stabilizing force (Henderson fills the van with humanizing warmth), while Jessie plays the eager upstart Lee takes under her resentful wing. It’s a tidily balanced sampling that the actors, with Garland’s banter and via some cozy downtime, turn into flesh-and-blood personalities, people whose vulnerability feeds the escalating tension with each mile.

As the miles and hours pass, Garland adds diversions and hurdles, including a pair of playful colleagues, Tony and Bohai (Nelson Lee and Evan Lai), and some spooky dudes guarding a gas station. Garland shrewdly exploits the tense emptiness of the land, turning strangers into potential threats and pretty country roads into ominously ambiguous byways. Smartly, he also recurrently focuses on Lee’s face, a heartbreakingly hard mask that Dunst lets slip brilliantly. As the journey continues, Garland further sketches in the bigger picture — the dollar is near-worthless, the F.B.I. is gone — but for the most part, he focuses on his travelers and the engulfing violence, the smoke and the tracer fire that they often don’t notice until they do.

Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise.

If the violence feels more intense than in a typical genre shoot ’em up, it’s also because, I think, with “Civil War,” Garland has made the movie that’s long been workshopped in American political discourse and in mass culture, and which entered wider circulation on Jan. 6. The raw power of Garland’s vision unquestionably owes much to the vivid scenes that beamed across the world that day when rioters, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “ MAGA civil war ,” swarmed the Capitol. Even so, watching this movie, I also flashed on other times in which Americans have relitigated the Civil War directly and not, on the screen and in the streets.

Movies have played a role in that relitigation for more than a century, at times grotesquely. Two of the most famous films in history — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (which became a Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool) and the romantic 1939 melodrama “Gone With the Wind” — are monuments to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Both were critical and popular hits. In the decades since, filmmakers have returned to the Civil War era to tell other stories in films like “Glory,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” that in addressing the American past inevitably engage with its present.

There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.

Civil War Rated R for war violence and mass death. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misidentified an organization in the Civil War in the movie. It is the Western Forces, not the Western Front.

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Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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‘Civil War’ beholds the rockets’ red glare but not real-world divisions

Alex garland’s lean, cruel film appeals to its broadest base by dodging specifics.

The jaw-clenching, bullet-clanging thriller “Civil War” opens with a blurry image of the president of the United States of America. As the president moves into view, we can see he’s played by Nick Offerman and can hear the speech he’s practicing, vague platitudes about vanquishing the insurgents of California and Texas. But even as POTUS’s face comes into focus, writer-director Alex Garland keeps him fuzzy. What are his politics? What could have possibly united blue California and red Texas against him? What year is it? I suspect Garland might answer that specifics are a distraction. No bloodbath is rational.

Early on in Garland’s fourth movie, a bomb explodes in New York. In the eerie silence, a hard-bitten war photographer named Lee (Kirsten Dunst) dispassionately snaps photos of the fresh corpses. Behind her, a greenhorn named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) takes photos of Lee taking photos of the dead, and behind Jessie, of course, are Garland and his cinematographer Rob Hardy filming images of both women. There are three lens-lengths of distance between these horrors and us bystanders curious to see the collapse of the United States.

Everyone in that chain would claim they’re recording the brutality for our benefit. Lee admits she hoped ghastly images from her earlier career — a montage of executions from other wars in other countries that flips by in eerily stunning slow motion — would caution her own homeland to keep the peace. Clearly, that didn’t work. Maybe Garland naively hopes the same, which is why he’s avoided the real-world polarization behind this conflict so his gory warning will be watched by as many Americans as possible. Garland has stripped every background player of any demographic patterns of age, race, class, gender or beliefs. One fatal standoff is between two women of color who appear to be roughly the same age. There’s no telling which side would want your allegiance (and, honestly, neither deserves it). The only word we recognize, a reference to Lee’s landmark photographs of something called “the antifa massacre,” rushes past so fast that only later do we realize Garland didn’t give away whether the antifascists got slaughtered or did the slaughtering.

Garland doesn’t investigate how this war started, or how long it’s been going on, or whether it’s worth fighting. The film is, like Dunst’s Lee and her longtime colleagues Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), coldly, deliberately incurious about the combatants and the victims. As Lee says, any moral questions about them should be asked by whoever is looking at her photos, but those theoretical observers don’t factor into the film, either. (By contrast, this year’s Oscar documentary winner “20 Days in Mariupol,” also about photographers in a war zone, threw its narrative weight behind the desperation to get its powerful images out .) When we take in Dunst’s weary gaze and welded-on grimace with the same dispassion Lee gives to her own subjects, we can’t imagine the last time she let herself feel anything at all.

Yet the blinders Garland welds onto the story make it charge forward with gusto. This is a lean, cruel film about the ethics of photographing violence, a predicament any one of us could be in if we have a smartphone in our hand during a crisis. That’s also a predicament that Garland and other big-idea, big-scare directors find themselves in when they want to tell a shocker about very bad things without overly enjoying their sadistic thrills. Garland’s first three movies — “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation” and “Men” — dug into artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and sexual aggression, some more compellingly than others. In “Civil War,” any patriotic ideals about what this country once stood for never come up. The closest anyone comes to invoking democracy is a funny gag when a hotel concierge tells Lee that, given the sporadic blackouts, she has the freedom of choice between risking the elevator or climbing 10 flights of stairs.

Most of the movie is spent embedded with Lee, Jessie, Joel and Sammy as their battered white van takes a circuitous route from Manhattan to Washington. The gang races their competitors for footage of the president. Over a soundtrack of anxious punk rock, we see the cost of nabbing the money shot: the bottles of vodka, the filthy clothes worn for days on end, the growing doubts that their press badges still offer protection. Garland has an obvious arc in mind: Jessie the rookie must shed her vulnerability (which Spaeny does, masterfully), while Lee the veteran must regain hers. But it’s hard to buy Dunst’s unflappable pro needing to be dragged around by the scruff of her bulletproof vest like a mewling kitten.

Occasionally, the film plays us for a fool. The trailers have made a fuss over a line where a rifle-wielding soldier (Jesse Plemons) asks the journalists, “What kind of Americans are you?” But in context, it turns out that the brute is asking Moura’s Joel if he might be Central or South American. (“Florida,” Joel replies.) The bully is actually “just” xenophobic — a fake-out that feels like Garland is nervously changing the subject. Yet, more often, the film feels poetically, deeply true, even when it’s suggesting that humans are more apt to tear one another apart for petty grievances than over a sincere defense of some kind of principles. In one dreamlike scene, the team is attacked by sniper fire at an abandoned winter carnival. No one knows who’s shooting, a stranger in fatigues shrugs, as they duck behind plastic penguins and plaster Santa Clauses. We never will.

R. At area theaters. Contains strong violent content, bloody/disturbing images and language throughout. 109 minutes.

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