MARTAIN Court in the act of social change
ON the Basis of Sex might be a courtroom procedural drama, but it is a good courtroom procedural drama. A bit like a particularly good, two-hour-long episode of Law & Order, this biopic succeeds in making its rather dry recital of American legal precedents surprisingly fascinating, even if it fails to pay enough attention to its central character as a result.
Based on the life of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, On the Basis of Sex follows her life from her first day at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, through to her landmark sex discrimination case in the 1970s.
Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) is one of only a handful of women in her class, and the sheer level of ingrained sexism she must deal with, right from her first day, is quite galling. However, driven by a desire to use her law degree to help fight for equal rights for women, she persists through the constant belittling to complete her studies, graduating top of her class.
Going on to become a law academic (largely because no law firm would hire a woman as anything other than a secretary), she eventually gets her chance to take on the system in the form of a taxation case.
A man has been accused of tax fraud for claiming to be the sole carer for his elderly invalid mother — a job that, according to law, can only be done by a woman.
Director Mimi Leder (director of Deep Impact, The Peacemaker and a considerable list of TV credits) has captured the female perspective on this era so perfectly and with such sympathy that even I was starting to get extremely irritated by the relentless barrage of sexism on screen.
Even the smallest microaggressions — the patronising tones, the pats on the hand, the constant presence of “important men” doing “important man things” — have a way of jumping out at the viewer, no matter how fleeting they are.
And this is probably, from my perspective at least, the film’s greatest strength and most poignant lasting effect. It didn’t just show me what sexism looks like, it made me start to feel it, and I very quickly got sick of seeing and hearing from sexist men.
Initially it was making me laugh because, being the 1950s, it was so rampant and outrageous by today’s standards that it seems almost comical. The sheer gall of it made me laugh. But as the film goes on, you realise how normalised it all is. It is relentless and part of the fabric in virtually every scene, and it very quickly becomes extremely irritating. As it should be.
A scene in which Ginsburg and her daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny) walk down a New York street and get catcalled by construction workers made me physically groan, squirm and mutter “No, don’t” under my breath. I didn’t laugh.
These aren’t things that have affected me in my life, not things I deal with day to day, but just for this fleeting moment of time and to this almost irrelevant extent, I got the smallest taste of just how bloody annoying it must be.
By the end of the first hour, it was starting to make me really angry — and that is something well worth taking away from the experience.
There also is a clever piece of gender flipping at work with the character of Ruth’s husband, fellow lawyer Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer). Martin is this towering figure of masculinity, with his law degree, his perfect jawline and beautiful deep voice, yet he is always in the background, often in an apron, caring for the kids and cooking the meals.
But for such an interesting film about sexual discrimination and Ginsburg’s lifelong crusade to change the legislation, the film seems to overlook Ginsburg as a person. Jones portrays her wonderfully, full of intensity, fire and steadfast morality, but in the midst of all the recitals of legal precedent, we never really see much of who she is as a person behind the lawyer, what it is in her life that turned her into this courtroom superhero.
We get effective glimpses of her private and home life, which add a little meat to the bones, but overall the character feels more in service to the story than vice versa.
The real Ruth Bader Ginsburg — lovingly referred to as the “Notorious R.B.G” these days — is such an important figure in the US consciousness that any American moviegoer will at least have a passing knowledge of who she is and why she is important. And there is a definite sense of hero-worship about this biopic.
But audiences from elsewhere won’t be going into the movie with the same knowledge or adoration, so without the assumed knowledge of the real RBG, maybe it loses some of its personal touch.
Even so, On the Basis of Sex is a stirring drama about one woman’s passion for bringing about social change, and the origins of her ongoing crusade to change her country for the better.
On the Basis of Sex (M) is now showing at Village Cinemas and the State Cinema. Rating: