OVP: RBG (2018)

Film: RBG (2018)
Stars: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Director: Betty West & Julie Cohen
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Documentary Feature, Original Song-"I'll Fight")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars (I wavered between 2 & 3-the film is more enjoyable in the moment than it is when you hold a critical lens up to it.  So if you're not in the mood to think too hard (or need to see a true patriot after Trump's Twitter tirades in the past week), see this...even if "don't think too hard" is a terrible endorsement of a documentary)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a national treasure and an American hero.  I was struck by this over-and-over again last night as I watched her documentary RBG, which has been tearing up the art-house scene and even migrating into more mainstream pictures (I saw it at an AMC with a packed, eager crowd on a Sunday night).  You're struck by this in particular during the film's early third, when you realize what an important role she played during her years with the ACLU, defending women's rights throughout the 1970's, something oftentimes overlooked in the era of "Notorious RBG" where the Supreme Court Justice feels more famous for her diminutive size and witty dissents from the bench.  Ginsburg's legacy is never in-doubt in RBG, but it feels like they aren't willing to explore it at more than a surface-level.  The film, as a result, never amounts to more than fluff, albeit enjoyable fluff, and while Ginsburg certainly deserves the level of hero-worship it provides, it doesn't have anything meaningful to say about her legacy or the Court's legacy in an increasingly partisan era for the bench.

The film's most interesting moments, in my opinion, are in the first third.  Such recent, forgotten history oftentimes requires repeating for younger audiences, and even though I felt relatively familiar with Ginsburg's career, there were a few nuggets here-and-there that felt particularly compelling and new (I liked hearing from her fellow female law colleagues or high school friends, understanding how this shy, introverted girl from Brooklyn managed to overcome so many odds through the power of her intellect).  The interviews with her children were particularly compelling in the trepidation they have about describing their mother.  You get the understanding that Ruth might have been "the tough parent" between she and her husband Marty, and held her children to high-standards.  There's a lot of love in the interviews with her son and daughter, but a nervousness that either reads as being uncomfortable in-front-of-the-camera or perhaps as not wanting to frame their mother in a perfect light.  This was fascinating to me in a way that not as much of the rest of the film was (even the conservatives seem to want to put a halo on Ginsburg), and as I'm always interested at getting to the root of the conversation, even with proper heroes, I wanted more of what it was like for them growing up, not to demonize Ginsburg but to perhaps give us a sense of her private world.

Because the film in many respects mirrors Ginsburg's attitude toward a curious public.  Progressive, filled with hope, but matter-of-fact and distant.  Ginsburg's that rare public figure that has had such a storied career you can break out the "Greatest Hits" and still leave some of the audience's favorites off-the-menu, but it never moves beyond that.  The talking heads feel particularly disjointed, like a hodgepodge casually-selected by the film's directors in a rush to get this to the screen, rather than taking their time to create something truly special and standing about Ginsburg.  Why, for example, are we only hearing from Sen. Orrin Hatch about the hearings, and not say, the Chairman Joe Biden (it's impossible for me to believe that he wouldn't have wanted to do this, considering this is Liberal Red Meat and he's clearly considering a 2020 run)?  Why not show Sen. Dianne Feinstein & Carol Moseley-Braun, both of whom had just joined the Senate Judiciary Committee when Ginsburg was before them in the wake of Anita Hill?  They touch briefly on her friendship with Antonin Scalia, but what about other justices-where was conversation with John Paul Stevens, who saw her as both an attorney and a colleague, or Sandra Day O'Connor, who was forever intertwined with Ginsburg by gender but distanced from her by judicial philosophy?  What of Merrick Garland and the constitutional crisis that rocked the court two years ago?  The film spends so much time featuring reaction shots to Ginsburg watching her caricature on Saturday Night Live for the first time, why not get Kate McKinnon to do a talking head, or better yet, have her meet Ginsburg?  It feels frequently like there is something holding back the filmmakers-was it budget?  Access to Ginsburg herself?  Limits in what they were allowed to show or say about the famed justice?  The film as a result feels incomplete, like we're getting a tertiary look at what should be a grand, definitive picture of Ginsburg.

As a result, other than the earlier catalog of her work as a law student and attorney, the film's only other real calling card is the examination of her relationship with Martin Ginsburg, the quintessential supportive husband.  We get very little in terms of a complicated picture of Mr. Ginsburg, either because the filmmakers didn't want to show any bad sides to the promising young tax attorney who became a primary caretaker so that his wife could succeed, or perhaps Marty Ginsburg really was just as wonderful as he always seemed in interviews and speeches.  Either way, his relationship with Ruth was so lovingly featured in the film, it made me excited for what Armie Hammer will do with this performance later this year in On the Basis of Sex, considering Armie Hammer-in-love is easily the best version of the actor.  Marty's death in the film is a tearjerker moment, weirdly the only one in a film with so much hope, and it's clear Ruth cared for him in a way that's uncommon to see in DC marriages.  I just wish that the filmmakers had taken off the kid gloves for the rest of the picture, giving us a fuller, clearer portrait of an important woman and her legacy, rather than just a fan page that feels like a scrapbook.