“Golda,” a new biopic of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir is not a cradle to grave look at the life of the first women in the world to serve as a head of government in a democratic country. Instead, the film, now playing in theatres, focuses on the eighteen days of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Hidden under an inch or two of make-up, Helen Mirren plays the chain-smoking, seventy-five-year-old Meir with equal parts fragility and steeliness. Confronted with the news that Syrian forces are gathering on the Golan Heights, she convenes a military consultation with Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan). Ignoring his warnings of imminent invasion, she approves full-scale mobilization but rejects a preemptive strike, fearing the perception of warmongering would affect Israel’s access to foreign aid and military support from their allies, especially the United States.
My gut told me that war was coming and I ignored it,” she says. “I should have mobilized that night. All those boys who died, I will carry the pain of that to my grave.”
Told primarily in flashbacks— Israeli director Guy Nattiv uses Meir’s testimony to the Agranat Commission into the failings of the Israel Defense Forces in the prelude to the war as a framing device—“Golda” is actually the story of two battles, the Yom Kippur War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and Meir’s struggle with cancer.
Narrowing the film down to the Yom Kippur War allows for a focused look at those events but feels like part two of three of the Golda Meir story. A life of the magnitude and influence of Meir’s deserves and requires historical context. Watching the truncated story of “Golda” I found myself wishing for a more detailed account à la “The Crown,” but without the soapy elements.
The casting of Mirren was controversial—critics said an Israeli or Jewish actor should have been hired to play Israel’s most important female figure—but in Meir’s more intimate scenes, Mirren dives deep to portray the character’s many facets. Her eyes moisten at the reports of the horrors of war, she is resolute as the only woman in the room and, surprisingly, even humorous.
The film works best in Mirren’s scenes with Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) and her assistant Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin). Her cat-and-mouse with United States Secretary of State Kissinger is far more playful than you might imagine.
“I am first an American, second a secretary of state, third a Jew,” says Kissinger. “In this country,” Meir replies, “we read from right to left.”
The relationship with Kaddar is grounded in respect and trust, and in the little moments, like when she solicitously takes a cigarette out of Meir’s mouth as she is undergoing cancer radiation therapy.
“Golda” isn’t the definitive telling of Meir’s story. It feels a little too stage bound, a little too condensed, but the collective effect of Mirren’s intimate moments and the sound design by Niv Adiri that brings the battlefield to Meir’s war room, make “Golda” an interesting, if flawed, retelling of one of the seminal events of the 1970s.
According to a new biopic Florence Foster Jenkins left the world with these words on her lips, “People may say I couldn’t sing but no one can say I didn’t sing.” Meryl Streep plays the eccentric New York City songbird as a woman with a passion for music but an ear of tin.
The delightful story of a society hostess with a song in her heart but no ability to translate that into something tuneful, is twenty five minutes into its running time before Jenkins (Streep) lets loose with her atonal caterwauling. She’s a wealthy woman who has devoted herself to the musical life of her city. She’s a patron of the arts, giving money to legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini and others, a founder of clubs, a fixture of mid-twentieth century New York life.
When she attends a Lily Pons (Aida Garifullina) recital the fire to sing is ignited. “Can you imagine what that must feel like,” she says, “to hold 3000 people in the cup of your hand?” With the help of her husband St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) she hires pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg) and Maestro Carlo Edwards, assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, to whip her into stage shape in exchange for handsome paydays. Trouble is her vocalizing sounds like two cats in heat fighting in an alleyway. So wrapped up in the music, she has no idea of the terrible sounds coming out of her mouth. “There is no one quite like you,” the Metropolitan maestro says delicately.
Her performances are both remarkable and delusional. “A few wrong notes can be forgiven,” says Bayfield, “but singing without passion cannot.” Her husband, who loves her but has a younger girlfriend (Rebecca Ferguson) living in his downtown apartment, carefully manages who comes to her vanity performances, ensuring the audiences is stacked with well wishers. When Florence books Carnegie Hall for a charity concert for US servicemen, Bayfield does everything he can to protect her from the “mockers and scoffers.” When tickets to the show sell out faster than for Sinatra—megastars Cole Porter and Tallulah Bankhead even show up—the show becomes Manhattan’s social event of the year but is it a display of vainglorious egotism or passion?
“Florence Foster Jenkins” is one of those true-to-life bios that seems to prove the cliché that fact is stranger than fiction. In real life Jenkins’s awful singing sold out concert halls and the records she made were the biggest sellers Melotone Recording Studios ever had and have become collector’s items. She is the center of the action, the reason we are here, and Streep plays her with gusto. Like Jenkins who won audiences over with her enthusiasm, Streep wins us over with her passion to present her character as a real person and not a caricature of a talentless hack unaware that she was being laughed at. Afflicted with syphilis contracted on her wedding night, she fought to stay alive for 50 years, taking each day as it comes, inspired by her love of music to go on. Streep, as usual, finds the real humanity of her character and brings that to life.
But for once, Streep is not the star of the show. In a movie filled to the brim with great performances from Streep, Nina Arianda as a Judy Holliday-type with a loud mouth and Ferguson as Bayfield’s second fiddle, it is Grant who shines the brightest.
His Bayfield is courtly but tough, a maître d’ for Jenkins’s life. He protects her from the harsh realities of life, making sure their “happy world” stays that way. It’s the kind of effortless performance that made him a star but it isn’t all surface charm and wit. Under his furrowed brow is a real love for Florence that extends beyond the perks of being married to one of the city’s richest women. He genuinely loves her and that comes across every time he glances in her direction. If it’s not a career best performance for Grant, it’s very close.
“Florence Foster Jenkins” is a story of devotion, passion and off key singing that, unlike its subject, hits all the right notes.
