Documentary displays the power of Ginsburg
Be a lady.
Celebrate America as
“the only country in the world” where you, child of a first-generation immigrant, could rise up on hard work andtalenttoapositionof power and influence.
And celebrate marriage as the rock on which you built your successful career.
These are all hallmarks of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as we learn in the documentary “RBG” — one that may surprise viewers with the way it shows how these “conservative” attributes contributed to the liberal icon’s success. Not that it’s won her wide support on the right. The movie opens with hysterical salvos from talk-show hosts describing her as a threat to the nation’s well-being.
You have to laugh, when you see them contrasted with images of the diminutive, amiable Ginsburg, now 85, on view in “RBG.” The brisk and informative Betsy West and Julie Cohen documentary shows the life and career of a woman who grew up as a free-range kid in Brooklyn, jumping roof to roof, landing eventually on the U.S. Supreme Court, on the strength of a keen legal mind that applied itself to successful arguments that have advanced equal rights forwomen.
And talk-show hosts notwithstanding, her prodigious legal talent has won her the admiration of leading conservatives (Sen. Orrin Hatch is featured), particularly the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom Ginsburg had a close friendship.
Watching them on screen together, in moments alive with respect and affection, is to get a rare and happy glimpse of a potential future for a political discourse that might yet evolve if we all follow the advice of Ginsburg’s mother.
The advice was “be a lady,” but it might easily be rephrased as “be a gentleman.” It meant, Ginsburg says, do not let yourself be guided by “useless emotions” such as anger. And she followed it assiduously — as one of nine women in a class of 500 at Harvard, she was denied access to the library on the basis of gender. Shedidn’tgetangry—she made the Law Review.
The fact that she remained composed is astonishing given her personal biography. While at Harvard Law, she tended to her newborn, and to her husband, Marty, stricken with cancer that required frequent radiation therapy.
Their mutual devotion became a half-century love affair (“By far the most important thing that ever happened to me,” she says) that forms the emotional core of the film.
Ginsburg’s stature in legal circles derived from the groundbreaking arguments she made on behalf of women — decrying wage and benefit discrimination in the corporate world and the military, or cleverly advocating for widowers denied spousal benefits by Social Security administrators.
The courts responded to the core of her argument. As she says here, “gender-based discrimination harms everyone.”
Her arguments as an
ACLU Women’s Rights Project attorney before the Supreme Court (where she went five-for-six) form the film’s most legally substantial passages. Later, it detours into Ginsburg’s adoption as a pop-culture fixture, and the film displays some of the wide-eyed adoration of RBG’S ardent fans.