The Glorias is shockingly bad. It takes a subject who could make for a riveting narrative film or an even better documentary -- feminist icon Gloria Steinem -- and renders her bland and boring, and for nearly 2 1/2 hours. Director Julie Taymor does just about everything I can't stand in biopics: She oversimplifies her subject (essentially treating her like a benevolent saint), jumps around in time without context, attempts silly gimmicks -- like goofy dream sequences to illuminate the narrative and ultimately lets the story devolve into a greatest hits montage of Steinem's life.
There is nothing wrong a with a rousing, awe-inspiring story. And ironically enough the documentary footage in the film (like the real Steinem's speech from the women's march) is far more emotionally gratifying than anything re-enacted here. But this film simply misses the mark in so many ways big and small that I can't recommend it.
I imagine that some viewers, particularly those unfamiliar with Steinem, the film will be an education. But not unlike The Trial of the Chicago 7 ( but worse) this film dumbs down its subject matter and in the case of Steinem herself, neuters her of much of a personality.
She's played by several actresses (hence the title), but principally by Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore. Vikander is totally flat and has zero charisma, with her sections suggesting that Steinem's beauty was the chief obstacle that she needed to overcome in life. Some cartoonish scenes are used to illustrate her rise and confrontations with the patriarchy, but as I've found with many of her roles, Vikander fails to invest them with personality or joy and so they simply sit there.
Moore fares better because she not only strikingly resembles Steinem but seems to have the gravitas to convey her essence but she too never gets to give a fully realized performance since the overly busy movie is constantly trying to mix things up with heavy handed narrative conceits like having Steinem have heart to hearts with herself during years past.
At times, I found myself wondering why this film was even made -- since it doesn't delve too deeply into any specific Steinem accomplishment. It's a highlight reel and a poorly excuted one at that. The flawed but watchable TV miniseries Mrs. America did a far better job of highlighting the different personalities and conflicts that forged the women's movement in the 1970s.
In that series, Rose Byrne's Steinem was also too much of a cypher but at least you could see why Steinem was a leader, albeit an unconventional one, and the plot had a drive to it. It didn't try to cover the entirety of Steinem's life and in doing so gave us more time to take the measure of the hard and incredibly valuable work she was doing (and still does).
What is particularly upsetting is the fact that strong women in history so rarely get the big screen, big budget treatment. If you screw up a movie on say JFK, don't worry they'll be more. But this may be our last shot -- for a while at least -- at a Gloria Steinem movie. And boy did they miss,
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