Why GOLDA Director Revealed ‘Hidden Secrets’ About the Leader’s Life
By Movieguide® Contributor
Though director Guy Nattiv joined GOLDA after the project began, he reshaped it from a violent war movie to a chilling biopic.
“This project already existed when I came on board, but the script was completely different. It was more of a war movie, rather than a requiem or a magnifying glass on Golda,” Nattiv told Roll Call. “There were massive war scenes and stuff.”
GOLDA tells the story of Israel’s female Prime Minister, Golda Meier, as she deals with the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Movieguide® summarized:
GOLDA is a historical drama. Helen Mirren plays Israel’s female Prime Minister Golda Meier as she deals with the crisis of Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack on Israeli territory during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. Golda gets advance word the day before the attack. So, she calls up 120,000 Israeli soldiers but nixes a pre-emptive strike. Syrian and especially Egyptian troops have early success. What can Israel do to push back the Egyptian troops? Can Golda convince President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to airlift supplies to replace Israel’s material losses?
“I did my pitch as an Israeli who lives in America, and I said to Nicholas Martin, who wrote the script, ‘The way you wrote this it is not how Israelis talk in command rooms.’ I wanted to get in there and work with him on an authentic version of that, and also put the war aside for a second and enlarge the Golda part,” Nattiv continued.
To provide a fuller picture of Golda rather than the war, Nattiv and his team met with her close colleagues: her press secretary and her personal bodyguard. From these interviews, they learned about the extent of Golda’s chemotherapy treatments – which she received in secret at 3 a.m. – and other hidden details about the leader’s life.
“So all this information that we got, we brought it to the Nicholas Martin script and did the changes,” Nattiv said. “Suddenly from an 80 percent war movie, it became like Golda in the war.”
While shifting the movie’s narrative, Nattiv also began to focus on creating an ambiance of horror to capture the despair of war.
“I came to GOLDA trying to recreate the style of what we see as her bunker, the claustrophobic corridors, and the loneliness that this woman was in: the lonely older woman walking alone as someone who’s an outsider because she’s from Milwaukee,” he said. “She was not a sabra, and the commanders are in their own group.”
“Moshe Dayan, he was like the Superman of Israel in the ‘60s, and then in the Yom Kippur War, all these misogynist, proud men got a giant slap,” Nattiv continued. “And this is who the grown-up in charge, aka. Golda, is handling the situation.”
Beyond capturing the incredible strength and leadership of Golda, Nattiv also hopes that his movie will serve as a warning to the current generation of Israel, who he believes is being blinded by the war with Hamas.
“In this movie, the smoke is such a metaphor for the fog of war, which prevents you from seeing 1 meter ahead of you,” he explained. “That’s the blindness we have now as a nation.”
For its incredible story, GOLDA is up for the Faith & Freedom Award® at this year’s Movieguide® Awards.
Part of Movieguide®’s review reads:
Though sometimes a little slow, GOLDA is a tense, enthralling historical drama. As Golda Meier, Helen Mirren turns in another tour de force performance of a historical person. GOLDA is a patriotic, conservative movie. It shows that the solution to establishing real peace and preventing future wars is “Peace Through Strength.” GOLDA isn’t just an insightful drama about the exigencies of political leadership during a time of crisis. It’s also about the agony of having to make difficult decisions that can send young men to their deaths.
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