The life of an introverted 85-year-old woman is not usually a subject that excites film producers – or audiences, for that matter. And yet, next month, not one but two movies are coming out about the extraordinary life and work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pioneering feminist, supreme court justice and now pop culture icon. On the Basis of Sex is a fictionalised take on the early part of her career as a law professor and then with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), starring Felicity Jones as Ginsburg and Armie Hammer as her devoted husband. She is also the subject of the documentary RBG, a far more satisfying look at Ginsburg’s entire life, from her childhood as a studious Jewish tomboy in Brooklyn, to her role today as one of the most revered figures in US public life. Gloria Steinem describes her in the film as “the closest thing to a superhero I know”.
Mimi Leder, the director of On the Basis of Sex, and Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the directors of RBG, happen to be in London at the same time, so I meet them to talk about the films. All three are smart, pleasingly straight-talking women who were involved with or certainly followed the women’s movement in the 1970s. Back then, Ginsburg was starting to fight the thousands of federal and state laws that discriminated against women, just as the civil rights movement had already started to take on the laws that discriminated on the basis of race. So, in their age and demographic, Leder, West and Cohen appear to be, and are, classic Ginsburg fans. But in the past few years, Ginsburg has – to her enormous surprise – accrued a huge celebrity among a new generation of young feminists, spurred on by her increasing role as a dissenter, fighting against the court’s lean towards the right, and encouraged by the blog-turned-book Notorious RBG, which inspired mugs and tote bags with Ginsburg’s image on them.
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