Movie Review: The Glorias

Director Julie Taymor’s often entertaining, yet occasionally whimsical, biography of the feminist icon Gloria Steinem, The Glorias, covers over eighty years of Steinem’s amazing and remarkable life. A feat that is achieved by the portrayal of the subject by no less than four distinctly original actresses at four disparate periods of Steinem’s story.

Crafted from Steinem’s memoir, My Life on the Road, the film somehow manages to succinctly tell the story of how Gloria Steinem became, well Gloria Steinem. One has to wonder the path someone must traverse to become the kind of person that Steinem became and to ultimately mean what she means to so many people. Taymor’s unique approach to the traditional biopic format and the seemingly undoable task of adequately covering the tremendously complex subject is to have the various “stages” of Steinem travel and converse together on an imaginary bus trip as they each recount seminal moments of the legendary women’s rights leader’s life from their own perspectives.

Julianne Moore has the meatiest amount of time as Steinem as she portrays her as the feminist icon most are likely to be most familiar with, while Alicia Vikander is shrewdly uncanny as the younger Steinem who makes an early name for herself as a writer after traveling throughout India before the later Steinem incarnation embarks upon the creation of Ms. magazine and the formation of the modern feminist movement, culminating (in the film at least) at the 1977 National Woman’s Conference. Even the younger versions of Steinem (Lulu Wilson and Ryan Kiera Armstrong) are afforded ample time to show how her adolescence and young adulthood shaped her ideology and world view as well.

Julianne Moore in “The Glorias.”

The film really finds its stride and tone when Steinem is introduced to Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe) and Steinem begins to hone her oratory skills and command respect across the country. Also of note is the work of Timothy Hutton as Steinem’s wandering yet constantly dreaming father who, along with her long-suffering mother Ruth (Enid Graham), form the bedrock of her character. One particularly rewarding scene, involving Gloria’s discovery of Ruth’s predilection for writing, which she had to abandon upon marrying Leo and having a child, serves as a sort of galvanizing agent for Gloria’s determination to follow her own path.

As a nontraditional biography – and certainly as a Julie Taymor film – The Glorias is not averse to taking chances and, while it does not connect on every chance it takes, it succeeds at enough of those efforts that it is easily one of the more important and timely films you may have the opportunity to see this year.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com

An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

@miketyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

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