“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is currently 85 years old, yet she still stands as one of the most progressive and assured chances that America has at not turning their highest judicial court into a complete conservative safe haven. RBG is the longest serving woman that the Supreme Court has ever seen, and this film makes it crystal clear to audiences that the fight to achieve her status was not an easy one.
It’s safe to say that Ginsburg single-handedly paved the way for women in America. It would be a very different world if she hadn't been fighting her battles so relentlessly, and “On The Basis Of Sex” is a homage to that. With RBG’s unflinching willpower and unwavering determination, this film rightfully portrays her as closely to a superhero as Captain America himself.
We first see Felicity Jones’s Ginsburg as one of the few female lawyer-hopefuls at Harvard in the 1950s. Despite having many setbacks, the front and foremost being her gender, we soon find her at a law professor job in the early 70s. When Armie Hammer, playing the role of her tax-lawyer husband Martin, discovers a case of Gender Discrimination against a man, she quickly jumps at the chance to represent the man in question, beginning a swift attack on the many laws that disparage the rights of women.
Felicity Jones gave a respectable performance as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You can see the fire in her eyes grow stronger as she is knocked down again and again because of the almost constant misogyny she faces, but it wasn’t enough to carry the film.
Biopics are rarely perfect and are more often flawed than not, and this is no exception. You can’t help but feel that it does diminish some of RBG’s successes by focusing so intently on the one case that began her career as an accomplished lawyer. It would’ve been good to see more of her successes after her first big case, and to be able to watch this incredible woman flourish and bask in the glow of her interminable hard work.
On the whole, this film wasn’t particularly unconventional, but it serves as a valid reminder that the fight for equality is far from over, and that we can’t afford to get comfortable.