The Glorias
amazonTelling the life story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Julie Taymor's The Glorias is one of the more interesting biopics of the year. Whilst the film might not reach the same levels of insanity as something like Tesla, The Glorias feels distinctly Taymor, taking on an incredibly stylised approach – especially when compared to the traditional biopic – to extremely mixed results.
The film visually and stylistically is a mess, to put it as nicely as possible. It isn't simple enough to put one label on the feature’s bold choices. The Glorias opens stunningly: Gloria climbs onto a bus in a black and white world, which becomes a visual backbone for the film. In visuals such as this, the film becomes something special. It carries a life and unique voice that finds moments where it shines through, not just capturing the life events that define Gloria Steinem's life but also the deeper emotional core. This holistic approach of capturing this icon's life is commendable and clearly inspired, which makes it all the more tragic when the film fails in its more out there ideas of storytelling.
Whilst visual metaphors, like the bus that Gloria rides on connecting her life from start to end, carry a sense of poetry to them, they are outnumbered by a series of visual representations of various emotions and story beats that fail to connect with the same power. Scenes like a sexist talk show turning into the Wizard of Oz are not only distractingly out of place but also simply feel cheesy in execution. The Glorias is a film with an inspired heart but clearly lacks control of its own ambitions, turning in a final project that tries to be so deep and clever at points that it simply fails to live up to those praises in those scenes. Though it is always exciting to see a filmmaker who is willing to take risks, those risks sometimes are misses – which is often the case within The Glorias.
This over ambition is also felt in the bloated 147-minute runtime that the film carries. Again, it is commendable to truly create a comprehensive and epic telling of Gloria Steinem's life, with the biopic clearly inspired to do the figure justice but, once again, it bites off more than it can chew, hurting the film overall. With the distracting visuals and bizarre editing, the film ultimately prevented the audience from ever truly losing themselves within the story, leaving audiences checking their phones and noticing how long of the runtime is left far too often. It doesn't help that the screenplay is incredibly messy when it comes to introducing new characters and guiding the audience through events, often feeling confusing. What is most disappointing, however, are the performances within the film. Even with the likes of Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander portraying Gloria at different stages of her life, the acting feels a smudge too passive to fully connect. Where Gloria might be a more soft spoken character, there needed to be a fire within her performance to truly bring it to life, which Moore and Vikander simply were missing.
Though the storytelling might be all over the place, one constant positive within the film would be its production design. Being a film whose story spans multiple decades and countries, the production design stands out as impressive, always doing the most out of any aspect of the film to truly suck the audience into its world. The costumes are also typically spectacular for the work of Sandy Powell, who every year simply adds more and more iconic and impressive pieces of work to an already all-time great career as a costume designer.
The Glorias is a film that is much easier to respect than it is to enjoy. With a bloated runtime and beyond uneven story, the actual viewing experience of The Glorias is often frustrating and confusing. Even if the film finds its major story beats and has some incredibly strong ideas, it is hard to justify spending 147-minutes to get to any conclusion the film finds. With that said, a project like The Glorias which takes risks and isn't afraid to fail is one that should be celebrated for inspiration alone. In a time where dozens of bland paint by number biopics come out every year, to see a filmmaker break out from the mold and truly craft something with heart and inspiration is truly notable and is the kind of thinking that will lead to the next all time great.
