The Glorias Review : It rings Back The Many Personalities Of Gloria Stenheim

The  Glorias(Amazon Prime)

Starring by Gloria Steinem

Starring Julianne Moore,Alicia Vikander,Timothy Hutton,Lorraine Toussaint,Janelle Monáe,Bette Midler

Directed  by Julie Taymor

Rating: **

If  you have  followed  Gloria Steinem’s feminist philosophy—and I can’t  claim to have  done so—this  film may provide  you with many moments of  recollective gratification. But for  those who haven’t really  grown on Gloria’s   fiercely  self-willed activism, this film doesn’t make it any easier to understand the mind  of one of America’s most complex women.

Gloria Steinem’s background suggests  nothing of what was to come . Or maybe there’s something there that we need to tap  into. For us  who  want to know  more about Gloria the  person  and her thoughts, this   film serves  up an  unnecessarily enigmatic dish, simmering  and sizzling but  not  quite as appetizing as we would have expected.

The screenplay employs two  leading ladies(and two younger  actresses)  to play Steinem. Happily  both Alicia Vikander  and Julianne  Moore  playing  the  younger and older version  of  the character are brush-stroke  portraits  of  the real-life Gloria embodying different moods  and eras  with an effortless fluency  that  comes to only those  actors who   have in some  way lived the  life that they’ve been  chosen to describe.

Alicia  Vikander’s  portrayal of  Gloria’s Steinem’s India stint in her younger days  is  beautifully shot . They convey  authenticity without bending  backward to  capture the  ‘real India’.And  Vikander looks   more graceful in a  saree than many Indian actresses.

What  doesn’t  work  for me is when  Vikander and  Moore, plus the two younger  actresses  playing their younger avatars crowd into  buses to travel together  amidst freewheeling  conversations on  what  it means  to be committed  a lifetime to a  cause. Such  a cross-generation distracting  metaphor   of the subject’s existential  politics  may be good  ‘cinema’in a different  more  slanted  context. Here  we needed a  more direct approach   .

Like  the real-life  Gloria Steinem there  is much to be  admired about  the  film. However  unlike  the real Gloria  the  film gives many Glorias to choose from. They never come together. They never seem quite like one whole  personality that  Gloria  Steinem searched for all  her life.