Opening with monstrous quotes from her critics, RBG paints a beautiful portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman ever to hold the post of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is unlikely to convince moviegoing voters sated by Dinesh D’Souza’s rotten “documentaries,” but anyone not already predisposed to consider RBG an enemy of the state will leave the film with loads of reasons to laud this legal eagle. Despite her reputation as the great dissenter, Kiki, as her childhood friends knew her, may wind up with more historical significance for what she argued before the Supreme Court than what she opined once on the bench. Her string of women’s-rights victories throughout the 1970s terraformed the legal landscape of gender discrimination.
Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West entertainingly educate audiences on this 84-year-old cultural icon, two-time cancer survivor and, most unexpectedly, BFF of the late Antonin Scalia. It tackles the small things (she’s a bad cook and an opera lover) to the big (she made the Harvard Law Review while also being a mother of a 14-month-old and nurse to her sick, beloved husband, Marty). RBG’s greatest lesson winds up being a question. Which will be greater: the hole or legacy Ginsburg will eventually leave on the high court?
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