RBG

RBG is an engaging introduction to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though its admiration sometimes prevents it asking the next question. Betsy West and Julie Cohen want to explain how a reserved woman became a public heroine through patient work against gender discrimination. They make that work accessible and give the person doing it room to speak. We recommend it for the legal history and the marriage, with some reservations about how readily the directors accept another expression of approval.

The strongest passages concern her case-by-case challenge to unequal treatment of men and women. The satisfaction comes from following someone who understands that persuasion requires more than being right, and is prepared to keep doing the work. The directors communicate the persistence behind that approach, even when they compress the arguments. For someone arriving with little legal knowledge, this is useful, engaging history, although there are moments when a memorable phrase has to stand in for a fuller explanation.

The account of her marriage is the part that moved us most. Her husband’s support for her ambitions makes the discussion of equality immediate, rooted in the way two people choose to live together. The directors allow that support to matter without treating it as a distraction from the legal career. It also gives the documentary some welcome warmth when the public praise starts to sound too much alike.

Claudia Raschke’s cinematography serves the film best in its attention to Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself. Her calm delivery lets us hear the force of an argument without much encouragement to find her formidable. There is pleasure in watching someone who feels no obligation to make every sentence sound like a declaration. That restraint gives these passages an authority the more enthusiastic treatment of her celebrity cannot quite match.

Carla Gutierrez’s editing makes a long working life manageable within 98 minutes, though some of the testimony would benefit from firmer cutting. Praise accumulates after the point has been made, taking time that could have gone to testing it. Miriam Cutler’s music suits the film’s warm manner, but we need less help feeling pleased with its subject. The account of the marriage supplies enough feeling on its own.

The weakness is the directors’ tendency to accept admiration as a sufficient answer. Interviewees can tell us that their subject matters, but agreement among them cannot explain every choice she made. Her judicial career needs more scrutiny than it receives here, and the attention to her celebrity makes that omission harder to overlook. The film is so pleased that people have embraced her that it spends too little time asking what they understand about her work.

A biographical documentary need not behave like a prosecution, and this one’s kindness is part of its appeal. We would still have preferred another difficult question to another expression of approval. There is enough here to make the patient business of changing minds feel worth watching for an evening. If a searching account of her judicial decisions is what you want, leave time afterwards for further reading.