“Golda. Judgment Day”: Meir and cigarettes

The Yom Kippur War began on October 6, 1973, when a coalition of Arab states led by Syria and Egypt attacked Israel. The day before, the Mossad warned Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren, known for her leading roles in the films “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,” “The Queen,” “Spice and Passion”) about the impending attack, but she underestimated the threat, and now she has to deal with the consequences. She loosens up. Taken by surprise, the Israeli army suffers losses, disagreements reign at the commander-in-chief’s headquarters, and Golda has to make important decisions herself, which sometimes turn out to be wrong.

Immediately after the war, an investigative commission was created (the Agranat commission), which was supposed to find out how it happened that Israel was not ready for the invasion. The movie begins from this moment: Mrs. Prime Minister sits in front of the menacingly unsmiling members of the commission and tells what decisions she made in those days and why. And the entire action of the film is an expanded flashback, woven as if from her memories and feelings – both expressed and unspoken. Connoisseurs, as usual, will find something to complain about here, but in general the course of events is reproduced accurately. The film sequentially sets out the historical plot, breaking the story into chapters: day one, day two, etc. It shows what position the Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan (Rami Huberger – Joseph Bau from “Schindler’s List”) took. That Chief of the General Staff David Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi, main role in the film “Foxtrot”) objected to him. What the future prime minister and then commander of the armored division Ariel Sharon (Ohad Knoller, known from the film “The Bubble”) said and did.