‘ON THE BASIS OF SEX’ DOES JUSTICE TO GINSBURG
ARMIE HAMMER AND FELICITY JONES STAR IN “ON THE BASIS OF SEX.”
Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, the movie about her life, “On the Basis of Sex,” sneaks up slowly, growing steadily in estimation, until a point is reached, not at the end but well into the proceedings, that it’s all downright inspiring. Here’s the story of a woman who not only shaped the journey of women in the second half of the 20th century, but whose life embodied that journey.
That life translates well into the movie medium, in that Ginsburg’s story — from her days at Harvard Law School through her appointment to the Supreme Court — has the built-in narrative structure of a dramatic film. As in a rags-to-riches tale, Ginsburg starts off underestimated. She’s quiet, she’s little and she’s female, and few will recognize her brilliance. She’s constantly blocked and put down and experiences doubts and disappointment, but she eventually emerges as a figure of fame and permanent importance.
“On the Basis of Sex” makes you feel the cost it took to build this life, the years and years of work, in the face of almost monolithic resistance. Interestingly, and this feels intrinsically true, the movie shows that the obstacles Ginsburg faced often came from her closest male allies, who, after all, were steeped in the very same culture as her political foes.
Ginsburg was at a disadvantage with these men, not only because she was a woman, but also because she was mild of temperament, not someone who could easily put herself forward. However, she did have the most significant advantage in her favor: She was smarter than everybody else.
She had the further benefit of a supportive, understanding husband, whose outgoing personality complemented her watchful reserve. The old line that behind every great man is a great woman sometimes goes the other way, and so “On the Basis of Sex” is also the saga of an exceptional marital partnership.
Felicity Jones plays Ginsburg and the story goes that when the real Ginsburg met the British actress, she wondered if Jones could do a New York accent. Jones can, sort of, but she misses the Jewish inflection, the sound of a first-generation child of Russian immigrants. Jones gets everything else right — Ginsburg’s absolute authority and confidence in her own intelligence, combined with a certain insecurity within the social world.
The movie deals with her Harvard career, her marriage to Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer) and her nursing him through a near-fatal illness; her graduation at the top of
her class, followed by her inability to get hired by a top or even secondtier law firm. She’s already middleaged, a professor at Rutgers Law School, when she and her husband seize on a potential test case to overcome gender discrimination laws, that of a man denied the right of a caregiver deduction because he wasn’t female. This sets Ginsburg on her path to becoming the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s movement.
Hammer conveys the ebullience and husbandly pride of the real Martin Ginsburg, who can be seen in the documentary, “RBG,” which
came out last year. And Justin Theroux is flashy and memorable as Mel Wulf, the legal director of the ACLU, which partners with Bader Ginsburg in her court case.
Theroux plays Wulf as part jerk and part good guy — that is, mostly good, but very much a man of his time. You know he’s on her side, but you also get the sense that, if he were told that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was going to be remembered as one of the coming century’s most revered jurists, he’d do a spit take.
But we know better. As the movie wears on, we gradually pass from admiration to genuine affection for Jones as Ginsburg, such that the rooting for this unassuming yet relentless woman becomes intense. Just don’t be thrown by the insistence of the soundtrack in the early going, or by one of the opening shots, which shows the young Ruth Bader looking around at the Harvard buildings with the innocent wonder of Marlo Thomas in the old sitcom “That Girl.”
“On the Basis of Sex” is a serious movie that slowly earns its emotion and enlists our involvement. Even before the finish, it’s goosebumps all around.