Mark Reviews Movies: THE GLORIAS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 29, 2020

As one watches more and more biographical movies, you realize more and more that any attempt to summarize an entire life over the course of a couple of hours is likely going to come up short. That's the case with The Glorias, which covers the life of famous feminist Gloria Steinem, from her childhood until just after the 2016 election.

Co-writer/director Julie Taymor certainly takes a somewhat unique approach to this narrative, by way of its framing device, its occasional dismissal of straightforward chronology, and especially within a few scenes of stylistic flourish. Those touches, though, ultimately feel like superficial frills, attached to a story that tells us a lot about Steinem—a bit about her personal life, the trajectory of her career, and her participation in the feminist movement for most of her life—but, beyond her beliefs, never quite finds the connective tissue to make us feel the impact of her life.

Right away, Taymor, who wrote the screenplay with Sarah Ruhl (The two worked from Steinem's memoir My Life on the Road), introduces the movie's frame, as four Glorias, each at a different age, ride on a bus. As a child (played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and a teenager (played by Lulu Wilson), Gloria sits, looking upon the scene of a suburban street outside the bus, shown in full color while the interior of the bus remains in black-and-white.

As a young woman (played by Alicia Vikander), Gloria passes through the busy, crowded streets of a city in India. Older and now having become the woman and activist as we know her, Gloria (played by Julianne Moore) is riding through the desert, making a stop at a roadside bar, where the initial tension of bikers staring at her is broken with compliments about how much she changed a stranger's life.

For the most part, the rest of the story unfolds chronologically, with a few flashbacks to earlier times in order to clarify some biographical information or explain some psychological rationale behind a choice—or some unwanted silence when the younger Gloria is challenged. We see the child and teenaged Gloria at home with her family—a father (played by Timothy Hutton) who lives life on the road and a mother (played by Enid Graham) whose mental health issues eventually require constant professional attention.

A large section is devoted to Vikander's version of Gloria, as she travels to and within India, listening to horror stories from women in a lower caste, who are abused and treated with violence without any consequences on the perpetrators. Arriving in New York City, she takes a few jobs at magazines, facing discrimination and harassment in various forms (from an editor soliciting her to a lot of sexist jokes), and becomes well-known after doing an undercover exposé of working conditions at the local Playboy Club. "That," an editor points out, "put you on the map" (The dialogue here is often bluntly expository, since the movie is in such a rush to hit as many key points of Steinem's life as possible), but Gloria wants to do more.

If there's an idea that extends beyond the usual trappings of biography here, it's in the movie's willingness to let Gloria fade toward the background as she enters into the realm of political activism. A character late in the story asserts that Gloria's greatest quality is her ability and inclination to listen, and indeed, as she begins speaking publicly and participating in assorted meetings, Gloria, as well as the movie itself, gives other women the spotlight.

We hear stories of physical violence, abuse, and death resulting from the illegality of abortion, but we also hear Black women activists, such as Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe, whose character oddly disappears from the story without a trace) and Flo Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint), whose own experiences provide a broader view of how discrimination is both unique and universal. While at a conference to sculpt the Equal Rights Amendment (As the bus of Gloria's life approaches this moment, the older Gloria calls for the driver to stop before reaching disaster), Gloria's listening extends to a fellow activist, who's conflicted between her Catholic faith and the conference's pro-choice beliefs, and Native American women, whose entire culture has been and continues to be threatened.

Mostly, though, the movie plays like a highlight reel of Gloria's challenges, the constant badgering and attacks from TV personalities, and accomplishments, assorted speeches and the founding of Ms. magazine. The steady flow of life events is occasionally interrupted by some flashes of inspiration, such as conversations between the Glorias, as the younger versions share different dreams and wonder what will happen in the future. In one sequence of admirably daring theatricality, the various Glorias confront a sexist TV interviewer with hellish visions of his sexual objectification of women.

Even if they feel somewhat out of place amidst the more conventional narrative, such moments are the movie's strongest, pointing toward a deeper understanding of Gloria's personal and political evolution or, in that nightmarish scene, giving boldly visual life to her arguments. The Glorias, though, always and inevitably falls back on the kind of standard, routine biographical narrative that short-changes its subject, her ideas, and her impact.

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