It was late in the film when my soul finally left my body. During a particular contentious interview, young Gloria Steinem (Alicia Vikander) swaps places with an older Gloria Steinem (Julianne Moore), and the studio is bathed in red light as the walls disappear and a tornado touches down. Both Glorias, along with their younger selves (Lulu Wilson and Ryan Kyra Armstrong), swirl into the vortex, laughing maniacally in a tribute to The Wizard of Oz. No, The Glorias is not your typical biopic. Except that it is, but with stylistic flourishes from director Julie Taymor that shouldn't be surprising but are nonetheless exhausting.
You really couldn't ask for better casting than Julianne Moore as Steinem. She looks nearly identical to the iconic feminist and is one of the best working actresses in the business. Unfortunately, her performance is lost within a sea of bad CGI and on-the-nose metaphors. When she takes a cab ride in the late '90s, hearing the driver spout off racist nonsense despite being an immigrant himself, she gets out and starts running on a concrete treadmill. The point is obvious but the visuals are hideous. Taymor's grand style requires a big budget to match. But studios stopped indulging her around the time her adaptation of The Tempest flopped. Though this film is distributed by Amazon, it was independently financed, and its low budget shows in every frame, not in an impressive way.
The film still gives us a troubled childhood with a con artist father (Timothy Hutton), a depressed mother (Enid Graham), and the younger Gloria's struggles to be taken seriously as a writer and activist. But it does it in the most ham-handed fashion, where every single man she encounters is either trying to subjugate, seduce, or undermine her. It also begins to resemble Forrest Gump, as Steinem encounters nearly every major civil rights movement around the world, carefully listening to each group's needs and never elevating herself above the movement for equality. Occasionally, she does interrogate herself in weird interludes where her older and younger selves ride a bus and question whether she did the right thing at key points in her life. It never works.
When the film focuses specifically on Steinem's role as a journalist and organizer, it's decent. But it's constantly shifting back and forth for a dance number or footage from modern-day protests. It also can't help that The Glorias arrives mere months after Hulu's Mrs. America miniseries, which featured Rose Byrne as Steinem, and offered a wider and deeper view of the entire women's liberation movement, along with better production values, writing, and performances. In every way, it's living in the shadow of the Emmy-winning show. While that was one of the best programs of the year, this is a very special disaster. Everyone involved deserves better, especially Steinem.
*This review originally appeared as part of our 2020 Atlanta Film Festival coverage.
