Mark Reviews Movies: ON THE BASIS OF SEX

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 24, 2018

Screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman doesn't illuminate too much about the early professional life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1993 and has become something of a cultural icon for liberals in recent years. As for her personal life, the screenplay for On the Basis of Sex basically gives us the usual husband-wife dynamic involving a passionate professional and the supportive spouse, only reversing the genders of that cliché, which, in itself, is slightly refreshing.

The film is fairly generic, although it hits its biographical necessities well enough. More to the point, though, Stiepleman (who happens to be Ginsburg's nephew) puts the focus of this section of Ginsburg's life—from her start at Harvard Law School in 1956 until a key argument before a federal court of appeals in the early 1970s—where it matters: on the law.

This isn't simply a by-the-numbers biography. It is that, but the film is also a smart discussion about and dissection of the ways in which the law of the land—both on a federal level and among the various states of the union—had imbued gender-based discrimination into the very fiber of its existence. People knew it, of course, but such matters had become a state of mind for ordinary people, legislators, and judges alike. It was simply the way things were, had been, and likely would continue to be. Hundreds of years of cultural expectations and social institutions are difficult to overcome—if not within the law itself, then simply in the way that people think about the "traditional" roles of men and women in society.

There is, perhaps, no other way that a biography of Ginsburg could operate. She had her own struggles, obviously, which are touched upon throughout the narrative. There is, though, much more to her than the course of her professional career, her familial life, and the assorted ways in which society tried to keep her potential influence as limited as possible. She had and, now at the age of 85, still has a sharp mind for the law—how it can become stagnant in the face of cultural change and how it must evolve to fit the ways in which society itself evolves over time. If the film had failed to give us even a glimpse of how her thinking works, it would have been an outright failure.

Thankfully, Stiepleman gives us much more than a glimpse, and director Mimi Leder's film shows Ginsburg's mind at work. It portrays her as a behind-the-scenes revolutionary of sorts: a woman who recognized, from personal experience and a common-sense way of seeing how the law affects everyday life, that change needed to come, if women of the United States were ever to be granted the foundational guarantee of equality under the law in this country. She didn't take to the streets in protest. She took the argument before assorted courts, in a string of cases that would gradually re-shape how the country and its government would define the protections of its founding document.

The story follows Ruth (Felicity Jones) as she enters Harvard among a sea of men—included among them being her husband Martin (Armie Hammer). The university has only recently allowed women to become law students, and at a dinner for those few female students, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), the school's dean who later becomes a legal adversary in the story's central case, almost demands that the women offer a sound reason as to why they "took" a spot from a deserving man.

On the personal front, there's a health scare, as Martin is diagnosed with testicular cancer, meaning Ruth has to attend both her own and her husband's classes while he undergoes treatment. There are other details, such as the way that the dean refuses to let Ruth receive a Harvard degree (something that other men in the program have been offered, despite finishing their education elsewhere) after Martin gets a job in New York, as well as the multiple, sexist excuses that law firms provide when Ruth looks to become an attorney in the city.

The thrust of the story, though, arrives when, through her tax attorney husband, Ruth, teaching at a local college, happens upon a case out of Denver, in which a man has been denied a tax deduction from the IRS for paying for a caretaker for his mother. The law essentially assumes that only a woman would be in such a position.

At this point, the film's biographical concerns mostly come to an end, and that's for the better. Ruth brings the case to the attention of Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux), the legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, who's skeptical of its merits, as well as both skeptical about but sympathetic of Ruth's broader intentions. In his mind, it's too soon for such drastic change to be brought before the courts, but Ruth sees that the culture has changed. It's time for the court system to recognize the fact.

The whole of the film—from these specifics debates to ones that take place in Ruth's classroom and with her teenage daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny)—becomes a simplified but coherent discussion about the contemporary nature of the law in its discrimination toward women and how the 14th Amendment to the Constitution might be used the groundwork to change that. It builds, of course, to a couple of courtroom scenes, but by the time they arrive, On the Basis of Sex has given us plenty of reason to understand the arguments, why they're vital, and Ginsburg's place within the history of such sweeping legal change. It's what we should take way from a biography—and maybe even a little more.

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