RBG

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thrives at age 85, providing a crucial dissenting voice on the bench with the help of a rigorous personal trainer and a pop culture following that generates SNL parodies, slogans like "You can't spell Truth without Ruth," tattoos, merchandise, and memes calling her Notorious, plus legions of fans legal, feminist, and humanist.

But she's so much more than a judicial bulwark against a burgeoning fascist regime. Betsy West and Julie Cohen's comprehensive and lively document "RBG" shares the hardscrabble biography and lasting feminist legacy of the diminutive wonder woman.

Many might know her from her lacy judges' collars - developed with co-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to cover the deep front-V of robes designed for men (she's got a closet full, and wears a particular one for dissents) - but that's just the outward display of her tireless support for gender parity.

Loosely narrated by NPR's legal expert Nina Totenberg, with appearances by other iconoclasts like Gloria Steinem, the film skillfully weaves footage from Ginsburg's 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearings (after being nominated by President Clinton, who was keen on nominating more female justices, also interviewed) with her life and legal stories from colleagues, friends and grandchildren.

The Brooklynite's father was from Odessa, and neither parent graduated college, but her mother instilled in her two maxims before she died of cancer when Ruth was 17: Be a lady but Be independent. Mom also taught the only child (her sister died young) that yelling doesn't win an argument, a tactic the soft-spoken (yet fierce) jurist still employs.

Ruth met her funny future husband Marty at Cornell, then they went to Harvard in 1957, where she was one of the 2% female class and consequently always felt on display. But her grades and legal prowess spoke loudly when she did not, and she became a member of the storied Law Review even while raising a daughter and a son and taking care of her sometimes sick husband.

He got a job in New York, so she graduated from Columbia. She left teaching at Rutgers to work with women's rights groups in the '70s, when laws were on the books to fire women for being pregnant, require women to have their spouses co-sign loans, and didn't acknowledge that men could rape their wives. In the spirit of Thurgood Marshall, and remembering the legal erosion during the Red Scares, Ginsburg set about to change discrimination by arguing equal rights cases about pay and benefits before the Supreme Court, where she won five out of six cases.

"I saw myself as a kindergarten teacher," she says, "for men who didn't know that sex discrimination existed. I made them think about their daughters and granddaughters." She remains a beacon for reminding citizens about how the law affects everyday lives.

Even though she was considered old in her early sixties, and spoke openly about abortion rights, she was confirmed to the SCOTUS by a 96-3 vote (Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, and Dianne Feinstein are shown on the vetting committee).

She had a unique relationship with conservative originalist Antonin Scalia, and led on several landmark equal rights rulings, including allowing women to enter the Virginia Military Institute in 1995 and requiring equal pay for women in the Lilly Ledbetter case, though her side lost by a slim margin for Bush v. Gore in 2000.

RBG loves opera and survived cancer twice without missing a day on the bench. This inspirational, necessary film documents and celebrates this trailblazer, this groundbreaker, this justice that's holding back a groundswell of injustice.

DVD extras include deleted and extended scenes, and additional interviews with RBG's ebullient personal trainer Bryant Johnson (who is keeping the Justice, as well as the hopes of the nation, alive and thriving), her 26-year-old granddaughter Clara Spera (who also admires her grandmother's push-up prowess), Senior U.S. Circuit Judge and chief judge emeritus of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Harry Edwards, sex discrimination plaintiff Sharron Frontiero, school friends Harryette and Ann (who call her Kiki), and her children Jane and Jim.

Ginsburg recites from memory an 1837 Sarah Grimk� quote that she's used to argue and win legal protections for women in the United States: "I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks."

"RBG"
DVD
$26.00
https://www.rbgmovie.com