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The Verdict? RBG Is An Ordinary Documentary With An Extraordinary Subject

Magnolia Pictures

For a few moments at its beginning, over shots of monuments in Washington D.C., RBG replays comments of people who despise Associate Justice of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg – she’s the RBG of the title. “She’s a disgrace to the court,” they say, “a vile human being” – personal statements of malice, not disagreements with her judicial practice. Then the film shows RBG herself, a tiny woman of 84, neat and trim and thoroughly respectable in appearance. And in your heart or your gut, you know that this woman is not what these hateful voices describe. You also know that the movie is entirely in love with her.

It’s hagiography – the description of the life of a saint – but with intelligence and significant appraisal thrown in. The people who testify for Ginsburg are distinguished – law professor Arthur Miller, the longtime feminist crusader, Gloria Steinem, former president Bill Clinton, other attorneys, Ginsburg’s late husband Marty. A bit of archival footage of RBG shows her sitting with the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the archconservative’s darling. And there’s footage with Ginsburg’s granddaughter, a student at Harvard Law School, who calls her Bubby and speaks with just a hint of grandaughter-ish condescension.

Directors Julia Cohen and Betsy West include lots of film and photo material of Ginsburg and her family, from when she was very young to the present. You watch Ginsburg grow from a typical-looking kid in an immigrant family in Brooklyn, through her college years, into law school and legal practice. When she testifies before Congress at her confirmation hearing, you realize that times and people have changed. Ginsburg talks about where she stands with respect to the interpretation of the law; she doesn’t hide who she is or what she thinks. It’s not a political game for her; it’s a matter of the law and how she sees it. She makes her stand on abortion rights clear, with no waffling and no attempt to curry favor. Her clarity puts the testimony of later court appointees to shame.

The clip with Justice Scalia shows how we’ve lost the ability to discuss. Scalia was a dear friend to Ginsburg and her husband; they shared a passion for opera and Marty Ginsburg’s cooking. Their political philosophies were diametrically opposed; they fought like cats and dogs – yet they treasured their friendship.

Credit Magnolia Pictures

RBG is also the story of a woman who makes her way through the nasty thickets of a male world. A dean at Harvard Law School chided the women students for taking places that should have gone to men. Young men at a major New York law firm had to force the partners to hire a woman – Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

RBG is ordinary as documentary filmmaking, but its subject is remarkable. Who knows how or why a person is lifted into celebrity. Sometimes it’s an Elvis Presley or a Prince Harry. This time, it’s an unassuming, but persistent woman with a lace collar and a mighty intellect.

And FYI, young Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a genuine hottie.

On another subject. A man named Pierre Rissient died several days ago at the age of 81. Few people outside the film world know of him, but the films you have seen may well have come to you because of Pierre Rissient. He was once a film publicist – a bad one he told me. He was on selection committees for film festivals – Cannes, Telluride and others. More than that, he brought to notice and to prominence many filmmakers who matter to the world. Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, the Australian director of The Piano, Jane Campion. He worked with Jean-Luc Godard in the early days of the French New Wave.

The celebrated New Wave director Francois Truffaut is famous for once saying, “It’s a beautiful day, let’s go to the movies. I asked Pierre Rissient if Truffaut really said that. Pierre said, “Yes. He said it to me.”

Howie Movshovitz came to Colorado in 1966 as a VISTA Volunteer and never wanted to leave. After three years in VISTA, he went to graduate school at CU-Boulder and got a PhD in English, focusing on the literature of the Middle Ages. In the middle of that process, though (and he still loves that literature) he got sidetracked into movies, made three shorts, started writing film criticism and wound up teaching film at the University of Colorado-Denver. He continues to teach in UCD’s College of Arts & Media.
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