The Glorias
**Seen at the 2020 Atlanta Film Festival.
I don’t remember “Frida” being quite as unorthodox a biopic as Julie Taymor has made “The Glorias”- although it was a very very good one- but that’s because I haven’t watched it in about 17 years. In telling the story of activist Gloria Steinem, Taymor has pulled out an interesting bag of visual and narrative tricks to show us how Steinem went from being a child with two parents who seemed to want different things for her to a feminist icon that helped bring the women’s right’s movement into a new age in the 1970s and ’80s. All the while, it feels like a very traditional biopic in a lot of ways, all the way up to the final moments, where we see late-life real footage of the subject, continuing to do the work.
We seen Steinem at three points in her life- as a child (Lulu Wilson) whose father (Timothy Hutton) is an antiques dealer who often travels around the world, and whose mother (Enid Graham) is an invalid after a nervous breakdown; when she’s travelling in India as a young woman (Alicia Vikander); and then, as an activist (Julianne Moore) and one of the people behind the creation of Ms. magazine, and leading the charge for equal opportunities for women. And then, at times, we see all of them together, on a bus, reflecting on what each one thought at their moment in the journey. If you hear of people wondering, “WTF?,” when it comes to this movie, it will likely be because of that.
The screenplay by Taymor and Sarah Ruhl, adapting Steinem’s book, is an examination of the different forces and events that helped shape Steinem’s political views, and inspired her activism and determination as a writer. One of the strongest aspects of this film is seeing how views shift over time, and how it’s not necessarily just one thing that makes you an activist, or passionate about a political issue. It’s not just one person who can shape your thinking, but a series of people, some of whom give you a perspective you did not think of, which is the case many times here. That seems to be as important a theme in this film than just presenting Steinem’s life, and it’s where many of Taymor’s most eccentric visual touches come into play. It makes everything feel like it’s working together to not just tell this story, but to help us realize something in ourselves, when we think about how we are shaped by our lives. Once we get to the footage of the actual Steinmen, we feel like we’re seeing another evolution in front of our eyes. That’s what makes “The Glorias” feel like more than just a typical biopic; it feels like another part of the story is just beginning, and I can’t think of a better way for this story to end, such as it does.
