A woman likeGloria Steinemcertainly deserves a biopic more thana fish needs a bicycle, though Julie TaymorsThe Gloriasmight not exactly be it.
Her crowded, earnest portrayal of the feminist godhead (now streaming on Amazon Prime) is refracted into several roles, portrayed primarily by a pair of Oscar-winning actresses:Alicia Vikander, who inhabits her as a younger woman, andJulianne Moore, who takes over around the age of 40.
Both have Steinems physical signatures the oversized glasses, the tapered fingernails, that fawn-colored waterfall of hair locked down.
Credit: Dan McFadden/Roadside Attractions
And each, of course, has her own singular take on the Ohio natives distinctive way of moving through the world, from the earliest bloom of activism to her status as a full-blown icon and figurehead of the women’s liberation movement.
But Taymor, who also wrote the screenplay from Steinems 2015 memoirMy Life on the Road, tends to cram it all in with the galloping, unchecked enthusiasm of a Wikipedia page, reeling from an itinerant youth spent crisscrossing a post-War America with Glorias scheming dreamer of a father (Timothy Hutton) to her years at Smith College, twentysomething journey of self-discovery in India, early journalism work including her infamous first-person embed as a bunny-tailed server at the Playboy Club and firm establishment as one of the most celebrated and scrutinized thought leaders of the 20th century.
There are traces of Taymors well-known whimsy sprinkled throughout the high-flying bits of flair that so enlivened her now-iconic Broadway production ofThe Lion Kingand films like 2002sFridaand the 2007 Beatles fantasiaAcross the Universe.
Here, though, they often seem oddly divorced from a too-literal narrative, which rarely seems to trust that the viewer will be able to recognize the incidents of Steinem’s life for their larger cultural implications without having it clearly and often clunkily spelled out.
Janelle Monaedrops in as activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, andBette Midlerhas almost too much fun with hats as the flamboyant lawyer and agitator Bella Abzug, but most supporting players are too occupied with pushing the plot forward to do much more than hit their marks before moving on.
As a reverent highlight reel and a history lesson,The Gloriasgets the job done; as a movie, though, it rarely sings.B
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