On the Basis of Sex (2018) on Netflix
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of six women in her Harvard Law School class. As a professor, she takes the case of Charles Moritz, denied a caregiver tax deduction reserved for women.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.1/1042,761 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Trailer
Plot summary
When Martin Ginsburg is diagnosed with testicular cancer during his second year at Harvard Law School, his wife Ruth attends his lectures as well as her own while caring for him and their daughter Jane. Martin recovers and takes a job in New York, but Dean Erwin Griswold refuses Ruth's request to finish her Harvard degree at Columbia; she transfers, graduates at the top of her class, and no New York firm will hire her. She teaches at Rutgers. In 1970 Martin brings her the case of Charles Moritz, a Denver man refused a caregiver tax deduction the law allows only to women. Ruth asks Mel Wulf, legal director of the ACLU, for help and he declines; Moritz agrees she should represent him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay was written by Daniel Stiepleman, Ginsburg's real nephew, and had made the 2014 blacklist of the best unproduced screenplays of the year.
- Natalie Portman had previously been linked to the role of Ruth Bader Ginsburg before Felicity Jones was cast as the justice in July 2017.
- In 2021 comedian Sarah Silverman called out the casting of non-Jewish actresses as Jewish women, citing Felicity Jones as Ginsburg, and said a courageous Jewish female character is never played by a Jew.
- The first trailer drew criticism over a scene in which Ginsburg says the word "freedom" is not in the Constitution, and screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman defended the line as showing the Constitution was always open to improvement.
- Rapper Kesha released the song "Here Comes the Change" as a standalone single on September 21, 2018, but it was left off the film's soundtrack entirely.
