Golda Meir & the Lincoln Lawyer
Liberal, but not woke entertainment, about leadership in a democratic era
The wonderful actress Helen Mirren stars as Golda Meir in an Israeli movie about the Yom Kippur War, on the 50th an. of which, Hamas raided Israel—you know all the horrors the terrorists committed… I reviewed the movie, Golda, for my friends at the Acton Institute, I recommend it, you can stream it, & I’ll start you off with this inducement:
Golda is not quite a war movie, since it largely plays like an interior drama set in Meir’s apartment, in the residence of the gov’t, & at an army command center. Nor is it a biography, although it focuses on Meir, since the film is primarily about her leadership during the war and framed by her testimony to the Agranat Commission. The gov’t formed this commission to investigate the failures of military preparedness in response to popular protests; its critical report led to the resignation of Meir’s gov’t in 1974.
All this history is summarized in her attitude & her condition. This is not to say that those events made her what she was, but that in her war leadership we see the full expression of the beliefs & deeds that defined her, just like the prime-ministerial office was the peak of her achievements. Mirren acts the part wonderfully, a rare portrayal of a woman as a competent & confident leader, devoid of arrogance or petulance, involved in momentous events rather than in identity politics, & thus an homage to Meir. For the most part, the anger & fear, the uncertainty of events, are expressed by subtle changes in her eyes. Her major prop for characterization is Meir’s chain-smoking; the danger of the moment & the requirements of politics forbid saying what she must be thinking. As for her condition, Meir is old, worn, stooped, & suffering from the lymphoma that will eventually kill her, for which she goes to chemotherapy. It seems only her will is keeping her alive & that the only object of her will is to save Israel.
One of the many very intelligent parts of the story is the depiction of the end of the Founding era of Israel—the heroes are now old, this is their last act, they must soon be replaced by a much more democratic generation, people who have been formed by Israel rather than forming Israel. It’s directly addressed to people nowadays even as it reminds the audience of their political origins & predicament. That’s an even better reason to watch it & think about it than Mirren’s Oscar performance…
The other review I recommend, for Law & Liberty, is about a new Netflix crime show, or rather a courtroom drama, Lincoln Lawyer, from the popular Michael Connelly series, the offshoot of the even more famous series Bosch (I reviewed that one for L&L, too). I thought it was quite intelligent & surprisingly the whole drama is about woke prejudices & the abuses they might lead to. Again, let me quote myself:
Defense attorney Mickey Haller embodies American restlessness & striving, almost living in his Lincoln as he takes meetings & goes from court to court on behalf of his clients, high & low, surveying in a week more of the vast & stratified democracy than many see in a lifetime. He’s at home on wheels in a country always on the move.
Lincoln Lawyer’s insight into the problem of being a man in America is this: Mickey adds to his democratic love of justice, equality of opportunity, & duty to defend the downtrodden the lawyer’s touch of aristocracy. He’s always immaculately dressed in a time when men despise & ignore the suit, the uniform of the modern gentleman. He has a driver, too, in a country of self-driven individuals who can barely muster the quorum necessary for the carpool lane.
Above all, the aristocratic privilege is to be one’s own man, to serve another only by one’s choice, &, bound up in this honorable freedom, to rise to the astonishing height of an almost divine providence, to make the difference between life & death for mere mortals. Mickey is not just an ordinary lawyer, not just an ordinary American. He brings a grace we need in our lives, as in our entertainment, but which we cannot demand.
By chance, Golda attained a nearly-irresistible timeliness, and Titus's fine review brings out several of its interesting strengths, but I do think it teeters near to being an overall failure. It seems to be trying to capture "political drama as it plays out in the close-quarters of isolated and uncertain statesmen," along the lines of what Darkest Hour did so well with Churchill (using the Lukacs books, esp. Five Days in London, 1940). The problem is that it fails to draw us into Golda's strategic thinking--when she makes her key move, we are totally unprepared for it, and unless previously-schooled in the Yom Kippur war, not even able to understand it. I respect the realism being aimed at, a realism about what it is like to be at the heart of such masterstrokes of strategy and diplomacy, but unless this is movie only for students of this particular war, the rules of drama require one to help the audience more.