Trailers before a movie are usually meant to appeal to the audience that is seeing that particular movie. Which is why it’s amusing that the first trailer during On the Basis of Sex was Captain Marvel. This movie plays like Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s origin story, taking us up to her superhero fight for civil rights against the appellate court of America for gender equality. And so is born the Notorious RBG.
We first see the young Harvard law student and mother, Ruth (Felicity Jones) lose her first superhero battle against Harvard Law Professor Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston). However, thanks to help from her sidekicks, husband Martin (Armie Hammer) and daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny), Ruth graduates top of her Harvard business class, and obtains a professorship at Rutgers when the evil chauvinist hiring practices won’t let Ruth become a lawyer. Martin, however, infiltrates the bad guy’s lair, finding a civil rights case against a man that would be perfect to upend previous historical precedence. With the ACLU army, led by Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux) behind her, Ginsburg takes this case to the appellate court, where Griswold has teamed up with Professor Brown (Stephen Root) from Harvard to argue against their former protege to keep the status quo.
On the Basis of Sex is a fight against a system. Systems are large, so the movie chooses lots of targets for Ginsburg and her family to confront, and for you to get upset with. The best scenes involve the more subtle ways of oppression. At a party, Ruth has to watch Martin have all the conversations she wants to have, while she is forced to the wives table. Like any true superhero, Ruth inserts herself into the guys conversation, but everyone basically ignores her, or comments her on her choice of husband, not her thoughts. Or another time, when she goes in to interview for a law firm, but the power players are all older men, hoping she’ll give them, ya know, something else in addition to her lawyer services. These little setbacks build to prevent Ruth from the career she wants simply because she’s a woman. When she turns to professorship, we see even more insipid means of keeping women down in US laws: credit cards in men’s name, no ability to choose to have an abortion, etc. These little injustices are seen by Ruth, waiting for the right case to argue in court; the one she chooses is gender discrimination against a man, because all the justices are older men, and the case is easier for them to identify with. This is a safe biopic, so the movie has Sam Waterston and Jack Reynor play the face of oppression , which is so evil that it overly hammers the point home too inartfully. As clumsy as that set up is, the movie builds toward a beautiful ending, that elicited more than a few tears in the theater I was in.
In addition to the court cases that make Ruth into “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice,” we get enough context into her life to help flesh out who she is. As played by Armie Hammer, Martin is a perfect complement for Ruth: completely enthralled by her, but also smart and successful in his own right. The best character moments are when the two of them are chatting with each other, especially when Ruth drops the toughness to explain her fear or frustration with her situation, the best example after the dinner party. Jane is more an idea than a character, but through her we see Ruth’s parenting techniques. The ACLU scenes are probably the weakest, only really servicing the plot and showing how persistent Ruth is, which we know already, but the scenes of her teaching are much better, showing how smart and relatable she can be to her students. As much as I’ve pointed out how this movie sees RBG as a superhero, On the Basis of Sex makes it clear she’s an extraordinary PERSON, and that she is in fact real.
It was a big year for the notorious RBG. Her biopic was well loved, and a showcase of who the woman is today. On the Basis of Sex, gives the world her origin story, and shows us why she’s such a big deal. And it appears she’s fought off 3 broken ribs to vote on a Supreme Court case, showing that even frailty of the body can’t stop her amazing spirit. Ruth Bader Ginsburg earns all the credit she deserves, and I hope people get to see On the Basis of Sex to be inspired by her, again and again.