‘RBG’ a heroic portrait of Ginsburg
I propose that Ruth Bader Ginsburg be declared a national treasure. Ginsburg, whose nickname is “Notorious RBG” is, like Notorious B.I.G., “Brooklyn-born and bred.” She is also the subject of the documentary “RBG,” and if you’re fatigued of all the bombastic films about comic book superheroes, here’s a real-life, flesh-andblood hero to celebrate.
Ginsburg, whose personal motto is women’s rights pioneer Sarah Grimke’s pithy, “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks,” has been a famous enlightened presence on the U.S. Supreme Court since she was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993. But as this film makes clear, she was a fighter for gender equality, and especially women’s rights, decades before the diminutive yet formidable Ginsburg donned the Supreme Court robe.
The film, directed by Julie Cohen (“The Sturgeon Queens”) and Betsy West (“The Lavender Scare”), features interviews with Gloria Steinem, Nina Totenberg, Ginsburg’s children and granddaughter, and young women inspired by Ginsburg, as well as black-and-white archival footage and still photos, and paints a glorious portrait of the famed jurist.
It all begins with her childhood and adolescence in Brooklyn, where she was the first in her Russian-Jewish family to attend college at Cornell, where she met the love of her life, Marty Ginsburg, a fellow aspiring law student and her opposite in temperament. Marty was the clown, while Ruth was the serious one. Marty, who was a celebrated New York City tax attorney in his own right, was her greatest fan throughout their marriage.
Ginsburg attended Harvard and Columbia law schools at a time when women were not welcomed. Inspired by the women’s movement and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ginsburg took on cases of gender inequality, beginning with one involving an Air Force officer who was not given a housing allowance because of her sex. Ginsburg, who argued several gender equality cases before the Supreme Court, was the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, after Sandra Day O’Connor, and one of the first cases she heard was a lawsuit against the Virginia Military Institute’s longstanding policy of refusing to allow women in the school.
More recently, Ginsburg has made news as the “great dissenter” of the current court with justices appointed by George W. Bush and Donald Trump. The film even tips its hat to the unlikely friendship of Ginsburg and the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with footage of them together. Every 15 minutes or so we are greeted by images depicting Kate McKinnon’s famous, if not exactly accurate, impersonation of Ginsburg on “Saturday Night Live.” Near the end, even lifelong opera buff Ginsburg herself, who is now 85 years old, watches it, giggling. Long live “RBG.” (“RBG” contains mature themes and some tough language.)