These sexists are incidentally reluctant to stand when Meir enters the room, but this idea is not pursued.
Lior Ashkenazi does his best with the role of IDF chief Dado Elazar, but otherwise these senior staff, including air force general Benny Peled (Ed Stoppard), sit around like cigarette-smoking waxworks.
Defence minister Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger) seems uncharacteristically panicked. Meir appears fatally hesitant in acting on intelligence from Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan) that the enemy was about to strike. The story is told in flashbacks from Meir’s testimony to the 1974 Agranat Commission, investigating Israel’s military failings in the run-up to the war. Mirren’s portrayal is finally upstaged by archive news footage of the real prime minister animatedly laughing and joking and upstaging Egypt’s Sadat at the peace accord – with a thousand times more energy and presence than the fictional version.Why couldn’t the film have dramatised this scene and given Mirren a chance to shine? Is she going to die? Why not? The film is flatlining.Īs a war movie, it’s bafflingly dull as a political-intrigue drama, it’s lifeless as a personal portrait of Meir, it’s inert and superficial. This Golda Meir impassively chainsmokes her way through wooden potted-history dialogue scenes with her military top brass, while everyone blows cigarette smoke at each other occasionally she takes a break to lie prostrate on a hospital bed, stoically smoking and dying of cancer. Mirren, normally such a sparkling performer, is lumbered with a grey wig, false nose and jowls, with occasional headscarf and handbag, making her look as if she is playing the Queen doing an impression of Richard Nixon.
0 kommentar(er)
