Express At Berlinale: Golda is an admiring biopic and Helen Mirren is marvellous in it

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When Golda’s friend Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber), emissary of President Nixon, makes a flying visit to mediate, it’s clear that the Americans will go with the flow of oil: I am first an American, second a secretary of state, and third a Jew, he says. It’s a great line, but of course Golda is given the last word: ‘in this country we read from right to left’. It is meant to elicit a chuckle, and it lightens the heavy mood of the film, but there’s no doubt that the doughty Golda is left with a clear signal that maintaining diplomatic relationships with those who control the reserves of liquid gold in the region will trump personal friendships.

Golda is canny enough to understand this, and in Mirren’s playing of her, we see that steely flint under the deceptive grandmotherly exterior, which kept her going while dealing with painful radiation for her cancer which would kill her a few years from then, as well as being the lone woman in the male world of war-rooms. She is truly the biggest man in there, making it a film which gives its Oscar-winner leading lady yet another chance at getting the big awards, even If it is not fully satisfactory as an impartial record of history.

Nativ has been called out for the choice of Mirren, a non-Jew, to play Golda. He is unperturbed, saying that he found in Mirren what he was looking for : a ‘Jewish soul’. The film leaves us in no doubt about that.

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Conflict is not just a key ingredient in global realpolitik ; the domestic arena can also be overrun by people who refuse to come to the table, or even agree to disagree.

Totem’, in the competition section, plays out over the course of an evening, within the confines of a house, whose members seem to be at odds with each other.
A birthday party is being organised. The members of the family are in various states of disarray mentally and physically: birthday boy Tona has terminal cancer, and may not make it to his next. His nurse-companion, who hasn’t been paid for two weeks, seems to be closest to him. Everyone else is busy. His little daughter Sol, whose young eyes see most clearly, is unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions, and the answers are even more uncomfortable. How does someone who faces imminent death deal with the merriment and the cheer, the balloons and the crackers? Is the festivity for him, or for the others who are trying to keep a brave face on things?
‘Totem’ is a minor key movie which deals eloquently with major themes. At the press conference, director Lila Aviles said that everyone keeps going out to make movies; she chose to go in.