The film On The Basis of Sex is highly engaging from a film-making perspective – on a variety of fronts.
The story-line focus’ on aspects of treatment as it relates to equality that eventual United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought for (and argued successfully). However, to focus on this element when viewing the film would be too narrow a choice.
On The Basis of Sex is highly crafted in terms of costumes and setting. It successfully covers decades of styles and settings.
On The Basis of Sex is highly crafted in terms of the presenting positions of the day. It successfully depicts how society dealt with hiring practices and attitudes over decades.
While no-one should cower or be accountable to previous era’s, we should not deny they occurred.
The simple math is Ruth Bader Ginsberg was the top student of Harvard Law in each of her first two years. Ruth’s husband, almost her equal academically – one class year ahead – was diagnosed with testicular cancer – but was able to graduate through Ruth attending his classes as well as her own. Both were superb at law both academically and in practice.
Ruth’s husband would get a job and become a superb tax law attorney. Ruth could not get hired at any single firm and ultimately accepted a teaching position at Rutgers – for which she was determined to be superb.
On The Basis of Sex presents these struggles as well as how America, its laws, and courts deal with basic discrimination from a gender perspective.