The two things that always stay in my mind after watching a film are the score and the ability of the film to captivate the attention of the audience. “On the Basis of Sex” follows the story of a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), as she fights for equal rights for men and women and highlights the issues of gender discrimination in the United States.
As a woman in the late 1950s at Harvard Law School, Ginsburg is already clearly set up for failure. The first scene in the film depicts Ginsburg and the rest of her classmates climbing the steps at Harvard Law for their first day of classes. Amidst the sea of black suit jackets, Ginsburg is easily visible in a sky blue suit.
As one of just nine women in her year at Harvard Law, Ginsburg is immediately discriminated against, by not only her peers, but also her professors, especially the school’s dean, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), who always chooses male students over Ginsburg to answer questions. It was only by being extremely assertive, and borderline rude, that Ginsburg was given the ability to speak.
As a mother and a wife during her time in law school, married to James Steven Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), who was a year above her, Ginsburg faced even more challenges on top of being a woman in law school: her husband’s cancer.
After graduating top of her class at both Harvard and Columbia Law, Ginsburg was not offered any position at any firm that she applied to, for a variety of misogynist reasons—whether it be because the firm “was not looking to hire,” that “the wives” wouldn’t be happy with a woman working with their husbands or because the firm already had a token woman.
After teaching law on sex discrimination for several years, Ginsburg finds her calling once and for all—a chance to show a male-dominated field that she is meant to be a practicing lawyer. How? Fight for the man. Sounds wrong, right? But the genius of Ginsberg’s argument against discrimination was that if men are discriminated in a way that women clearly are, well, that just can’t be right because men deserve the world, there’s no question about that.
And Ginsburg was able to stick it to the man. Even with every obstacle that was thrown at her, she was able to overcome everything and prove that the laws discriminated against a single man for wanting to take on a “woman’s role” and care for his ailing mother.
At a time when the civil rights movement was in full force, trying to tack on the equality of women seemed like an extremely far-fetched idea. And while it is clear that there was much discrimination based on sex, it is made extremely apparent to the viewer, which can be appreciated. Like the subject of her film, director Mimi Leder has made headway for women in the film, being the first female graduate from the American Film Institute Conservatory.
But what really makes the film is the score that accompanied it, written by Mychael Danna. Much like the music that he wrote for “Life of Pi,” it’s no surprise that Danna won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Golden Globe for the Best Original Score.
Oftentimes when watching a film, I get distracted from its contents and focus on the score. You can tell with almost 100 percent accuracy what is going on in a film purely based on the film’s score. And I love to listen to the score to see how much I can get from the scene without listening to dialogue.
The greatest part about the film was the adaptation of the score to mirror everything that was going on. Given the time frame of the film, Danna did an amazing job of incorporating music from those eras to bring to life more of the film. By utilizing mostly a small chamber orchestra particularly highlights the professionalism of the film and the themes that it covers. Yet it also includes more upbeat, fun tunes when the time calls for it.
The greatest part of the film though was the final scene, where a young Ginsburg is seen running up the steps of the United States Supreme Court Building and a quick angle change sees the real Ginsburg climbing to the top. I was shooketh.
