Film review: ‘On the Basis of Sex’

Felicity Jones is best known stateside for her role in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” where she plays a brilliant leader undertaking a doomed death mission against the Empire. And in her new role, playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex,” we are again left anxious - will the Resistance continue after her demise?

During one of the many dull patches in this biopic, we have time to reflect on how our lives will change if this standard-bearer of hope dies in 2019 and is immediately replaced by a judge (almost certainly white and male and conservative).

But it must be said that the film, like many of Ginsburg’s arguments in it, is narrow in scope - the story stops short of the Supreme Court. Jones’ bright-eyed RBG is constantly breaking across thresholds, and the first being the door to the 98 percent male Harvard Law School (the class of 1959 is, it goes without saying, as white as a Hollywood boardroom).

Ruth excels in classes, plays charades with friends and even likes beer.(Oddly, unlike most eventual Supreme Court nominees, she does not appear to keep a detailed calendar showing all the days she spends not assaulting people.) In Cambridge, Ruth is already with her husband Marty (Armie Hammer), who has a testicular cancer scare but is too well-cared for by his wife and, frankly, too good-looking to die.

Reflecting the film’s focus on legal matters, we don’t see Ruth and Marty’s wedding or the birth of their kids, and get only one short scene of canoodling. Post-Harvard, the film skips forward to the early ‘70s, where Ruth teaches the next generation of lawyers at Rutgers and Marty excels at tax law and chopping celery.

RBG’s interactions with her teen daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny) are stilted and awkward, as when Ruth questions why she cut school: “I went to a rally to hear Gloria Steinem!” Still, inspired by pioneering women’s rights lawyer Dorothy Kenyon (Kathy Bates), Ruth urges ACLU head Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux, with an unfortunate mustache) to let her get back in the fight.

RBG takes on the tax case of one Charles Moritz (Chris Mulkey) in Colorado. To appeal to a panel of all male judges, she selects a white man who has been taxed unfairly because of his gender. She says of the case: “It could topple the whole damn system of discrimination.”

The ongoing struggle for equality (or at least some facsimile of it) is reflected in the fact that experienced director Mimi Leder hadn’t made a feature film in 18 years before this one. Unable to find its footing as a historical drama, “On the Basis of Sex” most closely resembles the tried and true beats of a sports movie. Ruth’s training in moot court replaces reps on the practice field. Marty is the supportive partner cheering from the sidelines, Mel is her egotistical coach getting in his own way, and her cross-town rivals are conservative villains Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston) and James Bozarth (Jack Reynor), who contemptuously refer to “so-called gender discrimination.”

As she must, the star quarterback Ruth throws a Hail Mary in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals - she even has to make her arguments as the clock ticks down to zero.

The whole endeavor is less fun than the documentary “RBG,” in which you got to see an octogenarian Ruth do a high intensity work out and model her awesome collection of dissent collars.

The film ends after the Moritz case - the rest is history! - and as the credits roll you can anxiously check your pocket to see if one of those little buzzes was an update on RBG’s health.