On The Basis Of Sex is a film which comes directed by Mimi Leder who some may know as the director of The Code (2009) or Deep Impact (1998). The film stars Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Sam Waterston and Kathy Bates.
On The Basis of Sex is a film based on a true story of the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The film focuses on an earlier time in her life when as a person, she was fighting for equality and the inclusion of her gender in American society.
When first going in to see On The Basis Of Sex, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this film. At first I thought maybe it was going to be a very political film, which was maybe filled with propaganda, which occasionally happens. But actually I found this film to be quite educational.
I have really no clue when it comes to American law and what happened in the past with the law and the two genders. I did not know that there were actual laws that kept women from doing certain things in society, for some reason, I often thought it was more of a cultural thing, but actually much of it was written into law. Undoing these laws, was quite difficult to achieve because it involved breaking cultural customs which had been long standing that women should be at home and the men go out to work.
The film takes us through the legal process that Ruth Bader Ginsburg went through to start overturning some of these laws against women in society participating as they would like to. Oddly enough, what causes these laws to come undone is that there was a law out there preventing a man from doing something if he was unmarried and of course this needs to be overturned. It’s an interesting story and one that I think is worth watching just for the trivia of it all.
Felicity Jones who plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg did quite well with her role in this and played the character in powerful way. Her arguments on screen were compelling and I enjoyed watching her and her character work through the case. Other actors such as Armie Hammer and Sam Waterston were also equally good.
I also rather enjoyed the directing of this film from Mimi Leder. While the topic of the film and the nature of the story could be rather boring, the director did manage to find some charm and humour in it all. It was rather entertaining much of the way through.
Overall I feel that this is a good film to go and see if you are interested in gender studies or anything surrounding that topic. It is very US centric and we probably had different things going on here in Australia at the time, but it’s interesting nevertheless. The performances from the actors are quite good and the director did well to make this one not too boring. I came out of the cinema after watching this one learning quite a bit I had not known before and had never even thought about. As a film, it’s certainly very educational and thought provoking and I like that about it.
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