The Glorias

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By India Bartram

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The Glorias is a film based on Gloria Steinem’s autobiography: “My Life On the Road”. Julie Taymor directed the film and wrote the screenplay along with Sarah Ruul. Notable cast is Julianne Moore as Gloria, Alicia Vikander as young adult Gloria and Janelle Monàe as Dorothy Pitman Hughes. The film is available on Amazon Prime.

I was not on board with this film, until it moved past Gloria’s childhood. Once she blossomed into the Gloria Steinem we recognize today, that is when the film became the most engaging, natural and impactful. This is in part to Julianne Moore’s superior portrayal of adult Steinem. But I also feel like the first part of the film lacked direction.

The depiction of her childhood felt very drawn out and I couldn’t tell where it was going. Her family background was a huge focus of the first half of the movie, and although this is important to a person’s overall life, it lost relevance in the film once Gloria fully entered adulthood.

The film also was a little too on the nose when it came to Gloria’s run-ins with misogyny and prejudice. There was a lot of telling versus showing and overexplaining in the depictions of the challenges she faced in young adulthood. It seemed like the writers were taking the easy way out with these interactions and didn’t adapt them well from book to screen. It also felt as though the filmmakers didn’t trust the audience enough to form their own opinions and understand the subtext of these instances. There were less moments like these, once the story moved past Steinem’s young adulthood and she began her work with the movement.

A huge positive of this film was its emphasis on intersectionality and the global context of feminism. Although it centered around a white straight woman, there were portrayals of Native, Asian-American, Hispanic and African American and homosexual women. Not only were there just depictions of all different types of women, but they were actively involved the movement and they were main characters just as vital to the plot as Gloria. The film recognized that a woman experiences sexism differently depending on race or sexuality and that the movement is about inclusion and representation of all. One of my favorite lines was, “We don’t want to replace a white male middle class elite with a white female middle class elite”. A good chunk of the film focused on Gloria’s interactions with women in India, which recognizes that this is a global human rights issue, not just a movement in the United States.

I would recommend this film to anyone who is interested in learning a little bit more about Gloria Steinem’s life. Although the message about the feminist movement and intersectionality within it is very powerful and emotional, I wouldn’t expect too much of the film. It won’t change your life, but it may be worth a watch if you are curious.