Sundance spotlights trail-blazing women
Ginsburg, Fonda and Allred featured in docs celebrating empowerment
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jane Fonda and Gloria Allred were all born within eight years of one another — 1933, 1937 and 1941, respectively. While their trajectories are different, they’re also similar. Each defied expectations of their time and become powerhouse representatives of women, and all are in the spotlight this year in three films at the Sundance Film Festival.
Ginsburg soldiered through sexist obstacles, like the dean of Harvard Law School asking “How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?” to become the second female U.S. Supreme Court Justice in history. Allred took the often thankless task of taking on powerful men like Bill Cosby, Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein on behalf of powerless women. And Fonda eschewed a life of comfort as the daughter of Hollywood royalty to become an activist.
Director Susan Lacy’s Jane Fonda in Five Acts, an HBO Films production that will air sometime this year, is an account of Fonda’s life told through archive footage and new interviews with Fonda, who reflects on everything from her mother’s suicide and her eating disorder to the Hanoi Jane infamy and history-making workout videotape with heart-wrenching (and warming) candour and insight. It is the story of, as she says at age 80 and in the beginning of her last act, becoming a “fully realized Jane” separate from a man, whether it’s her various husbands (“none of my marriages were democratic,” she said) or the shadow of Henry Fonda, who was distant as a father but took the time to call her fat when she was growing up.
“I think Jane’s story has resonance for women of all ages and experiences,” Lacy said in her director’s statement. “Hopefully, viewers of this film will see a woman of courage and spunk whose life is an example of how change and growth are possible at any age.”
In the case of Ginsburg, RBG directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West saw an opportunity to put a spotlight the newly “internet famous” associate justice.
“Justice Ginsburg started to gain some fame as the Notorious RBG in the wake of some of her blistering dissents in 2013 and 2014,” West said. “She became a kind of internet sensation and Julie and I, great admirers of Justice Ginsburg, realized that a lot of her new fans didn’t know the whole story and didn’t understand the role she played in changing the laws affecting men and women in this country.”
The film looks at her childhood (climbing on garage roofs and wanting to do what the boys did), her exceptionally supportive husband, some of her early triumphs for women, her friendship with Antonin Scalia, her love of opera and, yes, that workout you may have heard about (you see Ginsburg holding a plank like a boss).
“By schooling people in some of the legal history of the women’s rights movement and some of the things that Justice Ginsburg achieved earlier in her career, we’re trying to create sort of an emotional experience,” Cohen said. “We want people leaving the theatre feeling happy and inspired.”
Sophie Sartain and Roberta Grossman meanwhile started documenting women’s rights lawyer Allred long before #MeToo and sexual misconduct became the story of the moment — and even before the Cosby accusers started getting significant attention.
The Netflix original documentary premières on the streaming service on Feb. 9.