Director Guy Nattiv talks about Golda

The biographical drama Golda is a new film released today about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The movie stars Helen Mirren in the title role. It is directed by Guy Nattiv (Skin) and written by Nicholas Martin (Florence Foster Jenkins).

J-Wire entertainment reviewer Alex First spoke with the director and found out that pre-pandemic, it was going to be a US$80 million blockbuster. That changed, and the film took on a much more claustrophobic feel.

These are the edited highlights of their conversation:

JW: So, who’s the film aimed at? Who do you see as your primary audience and what do you want them to take away from this movie, Golda?

GN: Look, cinema is for everyone. You don’t make a movie for one specific audience. In Israel, parents took their kids to see the movie. In the (United) States, it was more of an elderly audience that came, you know, people who were 60 plus that remember Golda as kids, as teenagers, as grownups and they told me that they didn’t go to cinema since the pandemic and it was their first movie, so that was refreshing.

JW: Obviously, if you live in Israel or if you are an American, I presume you will have heard of Golda Meir being the first female Prime Minister of Israel. I wonder how many people are going to see this movie who have never heard of Golda Meir?

GN: Many, many and that’s the people that are fascinated by her and fascinated by the history of what happened to her and who she was.

JW: Have you painted a picture of Golda Meir that is similar to that of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher and what she stood for because they were both dogmatic and determined?

GN: I think that they are different leaders. I see Golda as somebody unique. She was coming from the pograms in Ukraine. She obviously came to Israel from Milwaukee (USA). She thrown into the role of Prime Minister. She didn’t even want to be Prime Minister, but she found herself in this impossible situation. You know, the wrong woman in the wrong time, in the wrong place. And she was the first female leader in the world in modern times.

JW: I read about the fact that you were born the year that she became Prime Minister. Is that correct?

GN: I was born two months before the war started and my mother ran with me as a baby to the shelter. So, Golda was already Prime Minister, so I was born when the sirens went off.

JW: So how important was it for you to make this movie and why?

GN: I wanted to make this movie because of my fascination with a woman considered a pariah in Israel throughout my childhood. She was the face of the debacle, the face of the failure. You know, she was always the woman that was in charge of this failure until …

JW: For those people who haven’t seen the movie, we’re talking about the failure to mobilise earlier when there were already suggestions that war was imminent, are we?

GN: True, but also the failure of listening to what the enemy wants. The enemy, so-called Egypt, when (Anwar) Sadat a few days before the war wanted to make peace with her … and she did not believe him. She was a refusenik. So, she’s a tragic, tragic story. But when the declassified documents came out, we understood that she was not the only one. It’s the entire intelligence department and the head of intelligence that led her wrong and did not tell her exactly what’s going on. So, we always thought, oh, she was the one to blame because it was easy to blame an older woman, and she’s not from Israel, she’s American. What does she know? Right? But, I think I wanted to clear her name in a way that she was not the only one, and also show that she took responsibility and resigned, which we don’t see today with Benjamin Netanyahu and his horrible cabinet. You know, after the debacle of October 7th, we don’t see him taking this responsibility. And she did. That’s why it was so important for me.

JW: And of course, the Commission (of Inquiry, held in 1974) cleared her as well.

GN: The Commission cleared her, but she didn’t clear herself. She always blamed herself for what happened.

JW: For not taking up Sadat’s offer?

GN: For not understanding and knowing and open(ing) her sensors to the world. For not listening to her gut feeling. For not believing people like the Angel, the spy who told her war is coming. She said: ‘Oh, he’s lying, what does he know?’ And that’s why she’s considered a tragic leader rather than just a bad leader. Because she was a great stateswoman. Because of her relationship with (US Secretary of State, Henry) Kissinger and the Americans, because she was American, she knew how to talk to them. She helped a lot at that war.

JW: Some have called into question casting a non-Jew, unquestionably a brilliant actor, but still a non-Jew, in the title role. How do you respond?

GN: When I came on board, Golda was a US$80 million movie with Amazon, like the Private Ryan of The Yom Kippur War. It was 80 per cent war, tanks, blow ups, like massive war scenes and 20 per cent Golda. That’s what I read. But then the pandemic happened and we lost all our budgets and Amazon said goodbye. And we understood that we have to bring the war into the war room. Rather than shoot it outside, bring it inside. And that was one of my influences by seeing the (Francis Ford) Coppola film with Gene Hackman, The Conversation. That was entirely based on sound and I thought that would have been great to have the original sound from the war exactly like Golda experienced it, because she couldn’t go to the front. So, she was locked between those four rooms, four walls. And it became a chamber movie, a claustrophobic chamber movie.

JW: The writer wasn’t changed?

GN: The writer was not changed, but he changed the script. All those war scenes became sound and Golda’s part and her intimate scenes were rewritten. It was new to the script. (Previously), we didn’t have those intimate scenes with her secretary. It was more of a war movie and it became more of a portrait of an older lady.

JW: Was Helen Mirren already associated with the movie when you came on board?

GN: Helen Mirren was already attached the project when I came on board. The grandson of Golda thought about her. He said: “I see my grandmother in Helen.” The humour, the charm …how intelligent she is. He totally said: “I see her”. And when I came on board, Helen was already attached. She came to my house. We spoke for over four hours here in my house in Los Angeles and she told me about her(self). When she was 29, she visited a kibbutz in Israel and she volunteered and she lived with her Israeli boyfriend for two or three months in Israel. So she understood what it means to be Israeli.

JW: And I suppose that response is what many people are thinking – you get the best person for the job, regardless of their religion.

GN: I’m quoting Helen Mirren right now. Let’s say that only a Jew can portray the Jew. But tomorrow there’s a beautiful role of a Protestant or a Catholic. That means that a Jewish actor cannot portray a Protestant or a Christian. It’s a very dangerous discussion because if you say that only Jews can portray Jews, only Christians can portray Christians and an Arab who’s not Muslim, who is Christian, cannot portray a Muslim Arab.

JW: As you well know Hollywood has changed in recent times whereby with diversity you can’t just have white actors. You have got to make sure that there’s greater diversity.

GN: That’s true and it’s great and I love the fact that let’s say the film Coda has authentic actors. I think a movie like a Rain Man would never be able to have Dustin Hoffman playing a man with autism today.

JW: So it is good and bad in a sense.

GN: It’s good and bad, but we need to be very careful not to have the pendulum swing too much because I think that what I did surrounding Helen with Israeli actors – I’m an Israeli American director – I made it authentic enough. It’s not like there wasn’t anyone Israeli in the film. The film was surrounded by Israelis.

JW: The makeup artists and those who constructed Meir’s prosthetic facial features have done an extraordinary job. How long did Helen Mirren spend in the makeup chair before and after each day’s shoot?

GW: Three and a half hours from 4:30am to 7:30am. When we went home to our hotels to take a shower and just relax, she took off the prosthetics for an hour and a half. And not a bit of complaining.

JW: And how long was the shoot?

35 days … in the pandemic. And this woman is 78. She had the stamina of Golda.

Golda is out in cinemas now.