On
the Basis of Sex opened in the way any movie about female empowerment might: a
hopeful and determined young woman marching towards her future as her heels
click against the pavement.
That young woman
was Supreme Court Justice and women’s rights advocate Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(Felicity Jones). She was on her way to her welcoming ceremony at Harvard Law
School in 1955. Ginsburg looked around, realizing she was one of nine women in
her class, solidifying her isolation as a woman at Harvard Law.
This, among other
incidences of thinly veiled and blatantly put gender discrimination, defined
Ginsburg’s struggle throughout the movie. She is questioned, criticized and
patronized during nearly every move she tries to make in the film, just as the
real Ginsburg is in her own life and career.
The climax of the
film appeared after her time at Harvard with the case of Moritz v. Commissioner
of Internal Revenue. In the case, a man was denied tax provisions to support
the costs of hiring an in-home nurse for his sick mother simply because he was
unmarried. Ginsburg saw this opportunity to show how gender discrimination
could impact men and took on the case alongside her husband, Marty (Armie
Hammer), now a tax attorney, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Here, the movie
did the best job of making an entertaining story out of the life of an
attorney. Despite the weight and symbolism behind this case, most would have
been bored by the legal formalities of court proceedings themselves. To counter
this, the movie picked up on the drama, and included a few typical tropes to
keep viewers going. These ranged from “evil lawyers plot someone else’s demise
in a dark room filled with cigar smoke” to “protagonist endearingly practices
speech in front of a mirror before big events,” and showed us the magnitude of
the variety of challenges she faced.
What Ginsburg did
for women across America was give the persona of justice in a two hour film.
Ginsburg’s work is ongoing, and it was a much better move to show the American
people where the story of one of their role models began, which this movie did
beautifully.
