“We are not asking you to change the country, that is already happening without any court’s permission. We are asking you to protect the right of the country to change”.
The change always starts, and has always started, from inside the society, from people’s habits. The change of the law is just the natural consequence of the population’s values and priorities profound transformation. “Change minds first, then change the law” is the advice Dorothy Kenyon, the main character’s mentor and point of reference as far as the American law is concerned in the 50s, has given to our protagonist when she is facing her first case. the main character we are talking about is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, represented in “On the basis of sex”.
“On the basis of sex” is a movie from 2018 that shows the first woman in the American Supreme Court’s story, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It starts the narration from the beginning, when Ruth is still attending her classes at Harvard law school, one of the few women in that context; they were so few that the women’s bathroom was even there. The movie picture Ruth’s life at 360° degree: of her first as a student and then as a professor, of her issues in acquiring credibility and in finding job as a lawyer, but also her life as a wife and a mother, highlighting the support she is for her husband Martin and the support he is for her, the conflicts with her kids, especially when teenagers. Every single part of her life is part of the film, in a way that is as realistic as heroic.
Each failure, from the transfer refusal by Harvard university, because her case wasn’t comparable to the previous men of Harvard’s, to the difficulties in finding a job in the Big Apple, since a young and beautiful woman like Ruth would’ve caused jealousy by her colleagues’ wives, each failure seems to aim to the development of the character, to the gradual removal of the veil of innocence and naiveness that was covering Ruth’s eyes.
Other than picturing the love for justice that Ruth and Martin feel, the movie succeeds also in the portrait of the perfect family. However, this is not to be intended as a family with smiles and no problems, but a family that knows how to face problems, as a team. In each scene that captures the interactions between the spouses, the love and respect, almost admiration, the two feel for each other is clear. The faith in the other’s abilities and skills, the concern and shared pain, because this is a life they choose to live together.
It is Martin himself, as a matter of fact, that gives Ruth the possibility to work on a case about sex discrimination, where the possibility to obtain a tax reduction as a caregiver is denied to a man only because he has never been married, even though he is the only person who can actually take care of his old and sick mother. And as tiring as the workload was, and as little as the chances to win were, the couple never stopped believing, they never surrendered to the idea that justice was impossible to make, not only for their client, but to all the victims of sex discrimination by the American law.
Even though Ruth’s story dates back to a lot of years ago it’s not hard to recognize our society in the one of the States during those years. It’s not hard to see how the new generations have close to their heart justice for those who have always been discriminated. And it’s not hard, unfortunately, to recognize in our society those who oppose progress, to the inclusion when it concerns giving rights to those who don't have them, and to give voice to those who were never listened to.
Ruth’s fight, or her daughter’s Jane fight, or the one of her students, is part of the war people are still facing, in maybe a different way, but with the same principles and ideas at the basis: a more inclusive world, a more just world, at least in front of the law.