On the Basis of Sex stars Felicity Jones as the future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and tells the story of her early struggles against sexism in academia and professional circles. It’s all uphill for Ruth in this movie; from her law school Dean demanding why she’s taking a place in Harvard away from a male student, helping husband Marty (Armie Hammer) survive testicular cancer, through to her inability to find a firm to hire her post-graduation (despite finishing at the top of her class), yet she’s more than up to the task.
Frustrated by her lack of career options due to being a woman (“and a mother, and a Jew,” the film notes), Ruth takes on a professorship at Rutgers’ Law School and teaches the first-ever class on gender discrimination and the law. She can cite case and verdict on the very many precedents where gender discrimination was legally protected, and the rationale behind it. The American family, we are told over shots of the Ginsburgs sharing domestic labour and parenting responsibilities, depends on the role of the mother in the home. It’s only natural that women should be nurturers, so goes the logic professed by legal scholarship at the time and patriarchal characters in the movie. Any case brought arguing that women should be the equal of men has lost, time and time again. Enter Martin Ginsburg, devoted spouse to a badass lady lawyer and cunning tax lawyer. He brings to his wife the tragic tale of man being discriminated against on the basis of sex: Charles Moritz, a never-married Denver man who tried to claim a tax break on hiring a nurse for his aging mother, only to find that tax break was only meant for women (or married men who need to care for ailing wives.) It’s an obscure tax law case that could be the fulcrum to break open the entire system of sex based discrimination in American law.
Sometimes, a film comes around – often a biography, like this one, but sometimes an adaptation of an older story – that, despite being set deep in the past, is perfect for the moment. A theme or a lesson learned once, needing to be underscored again. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a legend these days, fighting cancer herself to stay on the American Supreme Court to face down Trump and his influence, but in the sixties, when this film is set, she was just another scrappy lawyer with a bone-deep sense of fairness. In the movie, she argues with her daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny) that To Kill A Mockingbird‘s Atticus Finch violates legal ethics standards in the course of the book; the irony of this is highlighted beautifully in text and subtext. To many, this woman (in her real-life and fictional forms both) is a female Finch, and the tale told here by director Mimi Leger and script writer Daniel Stiepleman, Ginsburg’s nephew, is as much an archetypal morality tale as Harper Lee’s tale of the South. The lesson to fight injustice is a universal one, but what makes this movie so timely is its call-back to the foremothers of the women’s movement. This is less “we’ve come a long way, baby” and more “look how bad things could get if we let the advances made get rolled back on us.” It’s worth noting how few liberties are actually taken with history in this film, and that the Jane Sherron De Hart biography Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life is an engaging read that will fill in any gaps for the curious.
On the Basis of Sex is a beautifully acted, emotionally moving film that turns into a legal thriller in its final act, and the build up is so good that I can forgive it a few cliches. After all, where else would a movie about a famous lawyer end up? Natalie Portman was long-attached to this film and ended up having to pass it up when the time came to make it, and it would have been wonderful to see a Jewish actress portray this Jewish icon. Nevertheless, Jones is a remarkable lead with phenomenal range. She and Armie Hammer light up the screen with their performances the Ginsburgs’ incredible marriage, bringing to life a love story between two real equals at a time when men and women were anything but that. Supporting turns from Justin Theroux and Kathy Bates are excellent; Cailee Spaeny as Jane Ginsburg goes toe-to-toe as the radical younger feminist confronting her incrementalist mother, and she holds her own.
The film was overlooked in a crowded awards season, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a look. Watch for a cameo from the woman herself: even for a non-American audience, I suspect, it’s a tear-jerking moment.
