Felicity Jones plays Ginsburg, who attended Harvard Law in the 1950s.
On the Basis of Sex’s hint-of-racy title fronts a just-pretty-okay cinematic experience that coasts on the awesomeness of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I wish that Sex was, well, sexier — more adventurous, more meaty, more demanding of the viewer and of its terrific cast — but I’ll take this. Coasting on Notorious RBG is some incredible coasting indeed, and the ride here is of the solidly crowd-pleasing variety, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Ginsburg, of course, is now a U.S. Supreme Court justice, but in the years of this movie — from the 1950s through the 1970s — she is a young law student, a university professor, and, once she finds her groove, an activist for gender equality. Her story was written for the screen by her nephew, Daniel Stiepleman, and directed by Mimi Leder. It’s a familiar David-and-Goliath tale of a dogged outsider battling her way into an entrenched, rigidly conservative system that doesn’t want her.
The wonderful Felicity Jones is smartly turned out as the young Bader Ginsburg, who is already married to fellow Harvard law student Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer) as the movie opens. Obscene sexism is the rule at 1950s Harvard Law, where the dean, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), stubbornly continues to talk about “Harvard men” even though there are, in fact, a few women in Ginsburg’s incoming class.
Later in Ginsburg’s career, Griswold will fret that the gender-discrimination case Ginsburg shepherded toward the Supreme Court is a threat to “the American family.” It’s easy to cheer against the outright bigotry that Ginsburg faces, and to applaud Jones’ chin-in-the-air defiance in the face of it. A little too easy, maybe: I’m frankly a bit tired of movies about sexism that cast battles such as the ones Ginsburg fought as remnants of the past, as if such matters have been resolved and we’re all equal today.
Still, there is intense feminist satisfaction to be found here in the depiction of Ginsburg’s marriage. Whatever dramatic license Stiepleman may have taken in telling his aunt’s story does not extend to the reality — portrayed here with romantic yet also practical sweetness — of Marty as incredibly supportive of Ruth’s career, and of her life on the whole. Gently amusing scenes of domesticity here include Marty cooking dinner so Ruth can practice her lawyerly oratory in preparation for a Supreme Court appearance. I’ll venture to guess that few women would say that Armie Hammer bustling around the kitchen isn’t sexy as hell.
Ruth had, we see, previously supported Marty through a life-threatening illness in their law school days, but there’s no sense that this is a tit-for-tat arrangement. The case that brings her to prominence — one that here allows her a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-esque scene of speechifying conquest! — is one that Marty brings to her attention, one in which gender intersects with his legal wheelhouse of taxation. Marty is simply behind Ruth 100 percent, and a portrait of a male/female couple that focuses on the woman is in itself remarkable. Toss in the fact that both partners share household duties without fuss or argument and give emotional and physical room for each other’s work, and it’s nigh on unprecedented.
We’re so used to seeing movies about men doing important work whose onscreen wives are quiet helpmeets, or sometimes women slightly perplexed by their husbands who eventually come around to being quiet helpmeets. It’s difficult to come up with even one example of a wholly supportive husband character to a wife doing important work. It’s so unusual that Stiepleman has said (in The New York Times) that the movie had trouble attracting financing because its portrayal of Marty was allegedly too implausible! By all accounts, this onscreen Marty is very true to life. But that’s precisely why, however otherwise pedestrian On the Basis of Sex might be, we need to see more movies like this one.
