Female Film Critics 24/375
Until recently, Nicolas Cage had never made a Western. Now he’s made two. Butcher’s Crossing – about an frontiersman searching for a hidden valley of buffalo he can slaughter – was the first, now there’s The Old Way. All-too-reminiscent of Unforgiven and True Grit, there’s little originality in Carl W. Lucas’s contrived, utterly predictable screenplay, blandly directed by Brett Donowho (Acts of Violence).
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Modern feminism owes a lot to Gloria Steinem, and director Julie Taymor revels in explaining why in The Glorias, her creative biopic about a woman who has fought tirelessly throughout her life for the rights of all women. Taking the title of Steinem’s autobiography — My Life on the Road — literally, Taymor centers her story on a bus on which primary passengers are Steinem at different ages: child (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), young teen (Lulu Wilson), young woman (Alicia Vikander), and mature activist (Julianne Moore).
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Even if you’ve traveled through much of Gloria Steinem’s life already — whether by her book My Life on the Road; the play Gloria: A Life written by Emily Mann and directed by Diane Paulus; or the recent Hulu series Mrs. America —Julie Taymor’s inventive, sometimes fantastical, movie The Glorias is a worthwhile trip. Written by Taymor and playwright Sarah Ruhl, much of the material is familiar but no less eye-opening as Taymor follows the feminist trailblazer at different stages of her life, when she is played by four different actresses.
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The good news about The Glorias is that Julie Taymor tries to avoid biopic clichés as she employs four actresses at different ages to tell the story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s life. But while indulging in her usual visual panache on screen, the director is almost too ambitious in trying to bring this notable legend to life.
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Gloria Steinem was still numb with disbelief when we spoke just hours after the death of her old friend, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The purpose of our chat was for a very different and joyous reason – to talk about Julie Taymor’s adaptation of Steinem’s memoir, My Life on the Road, into a dazzling feature film starring Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander. “I was so moved that they wanted to do it,” she says of the illustrious actors playing the activist at various ages in The Glorias.
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Julie Taymor has been making films in Hollywood since way before the recent uptick of (finally) hiring female filmmakers, so she knows a thing or two about fighting, or perhaps better to say, subverting the patriarchy. Her new film The Glorias takes audiences through the life (so far) of political activist, writer, and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem. Given the p*ssy-grabbing hot mess America has become in the last 4 years, the film is landing right on time.
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Twin a feminist icon with a theater icon, and you produce one remarkable film. Director Julie Taymor (The Lion King on stage and screen) based her screenplay for The Glorias on Gloria Steinem’s 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road. As a theatrical director, she knows the power of metaphor, of design, of production.
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