The Glorias: Exhausting Gloria Steinem Biopic a Clear Case of Less Would be More

By Kim Hughes

Rating: C

There is a lot of movie to see in The Glorias which, as promised in the title, brings us Gloria Steinem at various ages and stages amid a sprawling history lesson and several jarring fantasy sequences that fail to serve the gravitas of the subject, as if being a powerhouse leader of the 20th century feminist movement needed a sprinkle of The Wizard of Oz to drive the point home.

Considering Ms. Magazine — Steinem’s crowning achievement and most definitive activist launchpad — isn’t founded until about 90 minutes into The Glorias, you really have to be interested in the pioneering American women’s rights activist and journalist to commit.

Director Julie Taymor seems determined not only to sketch out Steinem’s life in granular detail but also to ensure that the backdrop of institutionalized sexism which became Steinem’s cause (while making her a cause célèbre) is thoroughly chronicled for context. She also aims to foment righteous indignation in those who may take for granted women not being habitually harassed in the workplace.

But such scope can be exhausting. And rather confusing, especially as The Glorias skips across the timelines with abandon. Also, last time I checked, sexism still existed; the audience is already on-board with the basic concept.

Things begin prosaically enough with little Gloria and her sister, Mom and Dad scraping by in Michigan. The kindly and adventurous family patriarch (Timothy Hutton) makes indigence seem like an adventure but the seeds of an itinerant life have been planted.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Throughout, the movie slides forward and backward, bringing us Steinem as a child (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), adolescent (Lulu Wilson), young woman (Alicia Vikander) and as the famously bespectacled midlife shit-disturber (Julianne Moore) most of us know best, with these characters speaking to each other, very often on buses where much of The Glorias curiously takes place.

In India on a fellowship, young Gloria encounters first-hand the horrors dealt to lower caste women living at the mercy of their husbands. Thing are only marginally better back in New York where the aspiring journalist hits the great wall of workplace sexism. Gloria wants to write about her travels in India; her male editor puts her on “a fashion assignment.” Coworkers expect her to make coffee while bosses expect her to put out.

Up next, Steinem’s soon-to-be-legendary undercover gig as a waitress in the Playboy Club where harassment is an artform and brutal working conditions heap on the misery. Her exposé becomes emblematic of her core: beautiful enough to pass for a Bunny, skilled enough to write about injustice, and deep enough to see past the effects to the root cause.

Consciousness thus raised, Steinem soon encounters Ms. Co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe, who steals her scenes then disappears in a poof as if another film was standing by) who sharpens her focus on demanding equality and firing up the troops. Encounters with game-changing fellow firebrands ensue — there’s lawyer and author Florynce Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint), activist and politican Bella Abzug (Bette Midler), activist and Indigenous Chief Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero) plus Betty Friedan in spirit and the dreaded Phyllis Schlafly on the news.

Sidebar: Taymor’s use of real-life footage is rare and, to my mind, oddly selected. There’s Harry Reasoner denigrating Ms. Magazine, then walking those comments back. Yet actual TV interviews where Steinem was subjected to skin-crawlingly awful sexist remarks are recreated. Surely the real things would have been more powerful, and both Vikander and Moore conjure Steinem convincingly enough that suspension of disbelief wouldn’t have been much threatened.

Anyway. The 1970s iteration of the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment and, alongside, for reproductive rights finds Steinem with particular purpose in the film’s final third, as Steinem also cements personal friendships with women from across the spectrum with compelling anger of their own and different, sometimes enlightening ways of battling inequality. '

Taymor and Moore succeed in spotlighting Steinem’s humanity despite the mountains of vitriol thrown her way. Then again, Taymor and Sarah Ruhl’s screenplay is based on Steinem memoir, My Life on the Road, so there wouldn’t be a lot of dissent in opinion, would there? Steinem herself appears at movie’s end (on a bus!?) so the endorsement in complete. A little distance — and considerable trimming — would have served the story better.

The Glorias. Directed by Julie Taymor. Starring Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Bette Midler, Janelle Monáe, Timothy Hutton, and Lorraine Toussaint. Available on VOD and digital October 2.