Women’s rights are civil rights, so burn your bras and get to the theatre!
The law is never finished and a work in progress in this film with a necessary narrative that resonates to today’s ceiling-breaking-career-women, about the challenges of working mothers circa 1960s…when their degrees were far from taken seriously.
It’s 1956 and the world is full of ‘Mad Men’ types commanding the workplace and universities. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) is one of a handful of females assembling into class at Harvard. She’s full of life, light and a certain earnest demeanor of things to come. But her hopes become challenged when she quickly realizes it’s a man’s world.
Harvard’s mantra toots one of loyalty, respect and truth to its institution. Back at home Ginsburg’s supportive and loving husband, Marty Ginsburg (Armie Hammer) pushes her to find her career, but sadly only a handful of women are earning degrees, and only a small percentage occupy the work space in positions that could have gone to a man. Potential employers think she should be home doing ‘bake sales’ and getting pregnant. Then there’s that imbalance: if she’s tough at the office, she’s a bitch. If she’s soft, she’s a woman. Not to mention if she’s pretty, the officer partner’s wives will become jealous.
So here she is #1-in-her-class…a Harvard grad with a hot husband, and nothing to show for it but an adorable daughter, Jane Ginsburg (Cailee Spaeny) who as a teenager, begins to challenge the very values her mother preaches to the students she now teaches at Rutgers. By default, Ginsburg has become a professor. Her course “Sex discrimination and the law.”
Her daughter doesn’t fall far from the Ivy (league) branch quoting Gloria Steinem and snapping at her mother that “it’s not a movement if women aren’t moving!”
But when a Denver case falls into Ginsburg’s hands, she strives to fight the fact that there shouldn’t be discrimination on the basis of sex…female or male. The case is one of a hardworking bachelor forced to home care his mother but not allowed – by current law – to get a tax break on said care-taking.
This is the focus of the film that goes full circle bringing in her law professor, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston) who challenges Ginsburg every step of the way, because let’s face it, the very men who write thelaw can’t necessarily imagine the circumstance. Tackling one case at a time (we only seethe one case which is the film’s focus) we learn that reason is the soul of our Law. Ginsburg will grow up to become the Notorious RBG. And Waterston will grow up to become a gay married actor on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. It’s good to see Waterston herein getting back to his Law & Order days.)
It should also be noted that Justin Theroux delivers an excellent supporting performance as Ginsburg’s legal ally, Mel Wulf.
While On the Basis of Sex feels classic albeit controversial Oscar material (think last year’s The Post), it sinks on entertainment. Instead what we have here is a formulaic film heavy on legal jargon and dialog. It’s so focused on the one case, there’s no space for expansion in its storyline. What did Ginsburg do on weekends? Was her marriage to Marty Ginsburg that solid? Bless him.
Nevertheless, Jones’s performance will earn her a well-deserved Oscar nod as this time she’s much larger than her wifey-supportive role as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything. But it’s the brilliant script from the I-can’t-imagine-the-research-of-the-first-time-screenwriter, Daniel Stiepleman, who really wins the case and will certainly win a nomination (maybe not on the Supreme Court) but in the race for Academy Awards.