Family anchors courtroom drama
On the Basis of Sex ★★★ (out of 4) Starring Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer. Directed by Mimi Leder. Opens Tuesday at Varsity & VIP. 120 minutes. PG
It’s difficult to imagine anything less sexy than tax law.
Yet there’s an unexpectedly fascinating story at the heart of On the Basis of Sex, which looks at the early life of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, focusing on one particular case that she cannily used to highlight the inherent bias against women firmly entrenched in law.
The case would serve as a Trojan horse of sorts, eventually toppling hundreds of U.S. laws that explicitly discriminated on the basis of gender.
The story starts out in 1956 at Harvard Law School — where women had first gained admittance only six years earlier — and follows Ginsburg and husband Martin, a brilliant tax lawyer, through their early years and struggles.
In 1970, Ginsburg, by then a respected law professor — no law firm would hire her — spots a case of discrimination that just might break the logjam. It involves a bachelor son denied a tax deduction as a caregiver to his ailing mother. Discrimination on the basis of gender — in this case, against a man — is still discrimination, so the argument goes.
The forces of patriarchy are aligned against her, embodied in Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston at his stodgiest), a former Harvard dean turned U.S. solicitor-general, and the battle is joined.
The screenplay by neophyte Daniel Stiepleman has a fair bit of pontificating — there are major legal and ethical principles at play after all — but does a pretty fine job of giving us a family, the Ginsburgs, that we actually care about. Husband Martin (Armie Hammer) isn’t portrayed merely as a supportive spouse; Stiepleman has written him as a full-fleshed character and daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny) gives young women an ardent, articulate voice.
But it’s Felicity Jones who has to do the heavy lifting, and she does a very fine job of portraying Ginsburg as every male chauvinist’s worst nightmare (now known as Notorious RBG to her devotees online, inspiring the title of a 2018 documentary about her): a passionate, complex woman more than capable of outworking and outfoxing her adversaries.
There aren’t a lot of hallelujah moments, but director Mimi Leder draws lovely performances across the board, bringing clarity and warmth to a complicated but important historical moment.