Betsy West, Julie Cohen (2018)

This biography isn’t quite a hagiography.  It opens with a sound montage of presumably right-wing voices deploring Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  In the course of the next ninety-odd minutes, her two children reveal she’s always been a terrible cook, rarely made jokes and may not yet have worked out how to turn on the television.  Justice Ginsburg doesn’t deny any of these charges.  The main purpose of Betsy West and Julie Cohen is nevertheless to celebrate the subject of their documentary, and fair enough.  Even if this were a hagiography, Ginsburg – born to first-generation American Jewish parents in Brooklyn in 1935, a renowned legal advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, the second-ever female member of the US Supreme Court – would deserve such treatment more than most.

RBG commemorates a great life and a great life partnership.  A few days after graduating from Cornell in 1954, Ruth Bader (a beautiful young woman) wed Martin Ginsburg.  They were happily married until his death fifty-six years later.  Ginsburg, who survived testicular cancer while still a student at Harvard, went on to become an internationally successful tax lawyer.  He was also, as his wife repeatedly makes clear, ahead of his time in promoting her professional advancement.  This included doing the cooking – and making the jokes:  clips from some of Marty’s public appearances enrich and enliven West and Cohen’s film.

The strongest element of this formally unremarkable but highly informative documentary comes in the sound recordings of Supreme Court proceedings, especially those from the 1970s, when Ginsburg successfully argued a series of landmark cases involving gender discrimination, on behalf of clients of both sexes.  Her clear, careful wording and calm, sober delivery are somehow unassuming; the impact of what she said on American life was great.  The juxtaposition is rather breathtaking.

A couple of simple graphics convey the shift rightwards of the Supreme Court in recent years.  Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg for membership in 1993.  (The excerpts from the Senate confirmation proceedings, chaired by future Vice-President Joe Biden, are fascinating.)  In the mid-1990s, she was perceived as only slightly left of centre among the nine Court members in terms of their individual political leaning.  A decade later there was only one member to the left of her.  West and Cohen note her enduring friendship with Antonin Scalia, for many years a leading conservative voice on the Supreme Court and in public debate.  He died in 2016, about nine months before Donald Trump’s election.  The state of the nation two years on gives the cordial relationship of the politically poles-apart RBG and Scalia a nostalgic flavour.

The pair often went to the opera together.  In 1994, they appeared in supernumerary (non-singing) roles in a production of Ariadne auf Naxos – an early instance of Ginsburg’s emergence from her earnest shell and taking light-hearted steps towards celebrity.  While her public image has continued to be rooted in her legal work (and a series of vigorous, liberal-minded dissents in Supreme Court judgments), the process of her embracing popularity seems to have accelerated since her husband’s death.  Her interviews with West and Cohen (she has much more screen time than any of their other talking heads) suggest that Ginsburg is both amused and flattered to have become a ‘pop culture icon’ – a process culminating in the creation of ‘The Notorious RBG’ Tumblr and Internet meme[1].

I’m fuddy-duddy enough to wonder if RBG’s celebritisation – her ‘pop culture appeal has inspired nail art, Halloween costumes, a bobblehead doll, tattoos, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and a children’s coloring book among other things’ (Wikipedia) – isn’t somehow demeaning for a person of her calibre.   If she hadn’t become such a media star would she have made what she subsequently acknowledged were ‘ill-advised’ comments about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign?  On the other hand, hasn’t she earned the right to enjoy herself while she still can?  In light of her first cancer treatment in 1999, she started working with a personal trainer.  RBG shows her still doing so, in spite of what looks to be advanced osteoporosis.  Since the film was released, she’s been diagnosed with cancer for a third time.  As she delightedly appraises Kate McKinnon’s take-offs of her on Saturday Night Live, there’s a carpe diem glint in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s eye.  Yet she must know too she’ll be long remembered and honoured as a feminist and civil liberties pioneer.

This was the seventh film in ten days I’d watched via Curzon.  Now seems as good a time as any to moan about their inconsiderate new promo whose relentless flashing (pink) images will send any self-protecting photophobe diving for cover.  On the other hand, four BFI visits this month haven’t yielded a single Audi advert.  Is it too soon to hope that bonkers American Animals preview evening was the beginning of the end?

25 January 2019

[1] RBG was completed too soon for it to mention that Ginsburg has a cameo in On the Basis of Sex, the recently released dramatised account of her career (in which she’s played by Felicity Jones).