COURTING SUCCESS
On the Basis of Sex is a clever drama that gives the real Ginsburg her due
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the subject of an award-winning documentary (RBG, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen), a recurring character on Saturday Night Live, a framed-photo cameo in Deadpool 2 and now the protagonist in an awards-season bells-and-whistles biopic. And these aren’t even posthumous honours; the 85-year-old is currently second-most senior associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and a bastion of liberal values.
On the Basis of Sex takes us back six decades to a younger Ginsburg, played by Felicity Jones as one of the first few female students at Harvard Law School. The dean (Sam Waterston) hosts a welcome dinner for Ginsburg and her counterparts, then grills each about why she is at law school and not in the kitchen. A real charmer, he.
But Waterston’s character is indicative of the chief problem with Daniel Stiepleman’s screenplay. It erects a straw man, inviting us to look back at the less enlightened sexual mores of the mid-20th century.
Look how far we’ve come since then, it seems to shout.
At law school, Ginsburg meets her charming husband (Armie Hammer); when he gets sick, she helps him complete his education while simultaneously excelling at hers. And yet no law firm will hire a lady lawyer, so she reluctantly turns to teaching.
A decade later, she decides to fight for the rights of a bachelor who is denied a tax deduction when he hires a nurse to help him look after his infirm mother. In 1970 the deduction only applied to women, divorced men or widowers. It’s unfair to single men, and Ginsburg realizes that if she can prove that, then laws that discriminate against women can be challenged using her case as precedent.
It’s clever thinking, but not necessarily the most gripping onscreen drama. In fact, the movie only really comes alive in the scenes where Ginsburg is butting heads with someone who is ostensibly on her side. This includes her well-meaning husband, but also Justin Theroux as a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union; and most especially with Dorothy Kenyon, an early feminist and lawyer played by Kathy Bates, and probably deserving of her own biopic.
It’s vicarious fun to watch Ginsburg take on the patriarchy. When one of her opponents decides to use a newfangled computer to print out every American legal statute that discriminates on the basis of sex, his idea is to show how ludicrous it would be to change them all. She essentially proves that it would be ludicrous not to. The historical precedent would be someone protesting that surely we can’t free ALL the slaves, or give EVERY woman the vote.
Director Mimi Leder (oodles of TV credits, plus Pay It Forward, Deep Impact, etc.) does a great job moving the story forward; the camera often seems to be racing to keep up with Ginsburg, but swings around to catch her face in those triumphant “I’ll see you in court” moments.
And the production design is glorious — typewriter-spotters will thrill to period machines from Underwood, Olivetti, Smith Corona and IBM. (Typewriter-spotting is a thing, right? Or is that just me?) In any case, one could wish for a little more contemporary resonance in this movie, beyond the cameo by the real Ginsburg at the end. But the woman and the cause both deserve their due, and on that front, On the Basis of Sex delivers. Just don’t let it convince you the fight is over.