Golda is set in Israel during their 1973 Yom Kippur war with Egypt and Syria. This is a conflict for which I had vanishingly little knowledge… which makes a movie about it potentially interesting.

The film follows Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meier (as played by Helen Mirren) as she tries to navigate her country through the latest attempt to wipe them out… all of them.

While watching this film, I wondered if a documentary on the same subject would have been more interesting. I suspect the answer is yes. Not that this is a bad movie, but the majority of the interesting bits are in the politics and movement of armies and less on the PM herself. That said, her story probably hits harder with Israelis and people with memories of these events.

The film operates on a decently low budget so it compensates for not being able to afford filming actual battles by providing snippets of newsreels and presenting battles in command centers as Golda and the various generals listen to radio chatter. It’s an economic way of getting the point across and it can have its suspenseful and tragic moments. It’s not the most cinematic depiction, but it works.

And that’s about all I have to say about that. It’s a well produced taste of history with fine acting on a low budget. It’s interesting and rarely boring.

Oh, and it gave me insight into why America’s 1973 oil crisis was a thing. Always knew it had something to do with OPEC, but putting the unstated pieces together was interesting. And there I went and made it all about the U.S. <sigh>

Score: 77