On The Basis of Sex, If Beale Street Could Talk

In FILM, Tackling discrimination In the 1970s

Originally printed in Compass, January 16, 2018.

Two new films, “On The Basis of Sex” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” unfold in 1970s New York as two women confront a justice system more concerned with upholding an image of the past than protecting the rights of the people in its present day. One is a Brooklyn–born Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in her younger years before becoming a Supreme Court Justice, attempting to use a small tax case as precedence for overturning gender–based discrimination on a constitutional level. The other is Harlem–born Tish, a pregnant 19–year–old from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, whose boyfriend has been falsely imprisoned after being targeted by a white police officer. It’s no fun to tell you only one film ends victoriously.

On The Basis Of Sex

For all the European–born clichés of the uncultured American, there are still a number of artistic pursuits we Yanks have pretty much perfected stateside. “West Side Story” composer Leonard Bernstein described musical theater as arising “out of American roots, out of our speech, our tempo, our moral attitudes, our way of moving.” There is a bold optimism to any musical, with even a tragic ending belted out, the orchestra swelling triumphantly, the lyrics heard and remembered by an audience waiting to applaud. To Bernstein’s sentiment, I would add two other, squarely American pieces of entertainment, fueled by expected applause — the courtroom drama and the underdog sports flick, where the little guy can have his moment in the ring. “On The Basis of Sex,” playing as a crowd–pleaser to just about all but Lindsey Graham, operates as both.

Opening in 1959, Ruth (Felicity Jones) is one of only nine female students entering the first year class at Harvard Law, each quick to be questioned by the dean, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), as to why they’ve taken a spot a man could have filled. It’s at a dress-up dinner party at his faculty housing, seemingly meant to both placate and interrogate the pearl-clad young women, that Ruth catches on that no answer will satisfy.

“My husband is in the second year class, I’m at Harvard to learn more about his work,” she mocks, Waterston’s face souring as the guests watch on in amusement. “So I can be a more patient and understanding wife.”

The husband in question is Marty (Armie Hammer) and the real Ginsbergs shared a remarkably forward–thinking partnership that treated husband and wife as equal players who shared in housework and childcare, and each made sacrifices for the betterment of the other’s career. Neither prim, Oxford–educated Jones, nor Hammer, born in that same Santa Monica sun as Robert Redford, ever find the rough edges of inhabiting two outer–borough Jewish leftists. Let’s face it, when Barbra Streisand says, “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell” at the end of “The Way We Were,” we’re picturing a face like Jones’, with an upturned, porcelain nose. Still, she knows how to carry a movie with an undeniable tenacity, and Jones shares a fun, and considering the reverence of the material, almost daringly sexy chemistry with the gentle touch of Hammer’s warmhearted performance.

Marty may be the love interest, but it’s Justin Theroux as ACLU director Mel Wulf who gets to tear into some meat as the prized figure in any sports story — the coach. You may be surprised how closely the story beats match up. He thinks the case will get too big, Ruth is too green, there’s even a mock trial “training scene” where he spars with her until she can’t take the hits, and it seems maybe she doesn’t have... what we all know she does. Even as the film paints her journey to Court of Appeals in 1970 with John G. Avildsen–influenced strokes, Ruth gets to play the full range of what lurks under every high achiever. She may be underestimated, but she is also prideful to a fault. Within every fighter is a wounded egoist — what matters, of course, is for whom they fight.

If Beale Street Could Talk

If “On The Basis of Sex” is a boxing match, then “Beale Street” is a ballet. As follow up to his Best Picture–winning “Moonlight,” writer and director Barry Jenkins moves our focus further uptown, away from the Ginsburgs and their cushy apartment and privately–educated offspring, to what must be the most romantic vision of Harlem ever captured on screen. In rich hues of autumn — emerald and olive greens mix with mustards and cream — Jenkins has crafted a languid melodrama that visually lives in the land of art.

Tish (newcomer KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James, destined for stardom) are two young lovers who must meet separated by glass. Fonny is awaiting trial, protecting himself with blind hope, while Tish, adding pressure to his ticking clock, informs him they’ll soon be having a baby.

With both the specificity and unpredictability of memory, the film weaves in and out of their present circumstance, circling around to how they fell in love, and where. The locations — urban parks, an artist’s loft, a shared red umbrella in the rain — craft their own version of the artistically–designed and bittersweet romances of the mid-20th century. Think Douglas Sirk’s technicolor “All That Heaven Allows,” or Jacques Demy’s French musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” One gets the sense that Jenkins is seizing the present opportunity to rewrite omissions in the history of black cinema, creating the classics he never got to see himself in. In many ways, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is an old–fashioned movie, but it’s nostalgic ache doesn’t retread, it uncovers.

Perhaps sensing its inevitable end, Fonny has been set–up on a false rape charge by a crooked cop and the lead witness has fled to Puerto Rico, “Beale Street” is in no rush to conclude. Instead, it drifts into scenes of pure mood, into observational voiceover by Tish that tip a hat to the film’s Modernist novelistic roots, ambling around what came before to avoid moving forward.

It’s intellectually interesting if not always stimulating. The more electric scenes revolve around anchoring Tish and Fonny to their neighborhood and culture, and the close-knit families working tirelessly to help them. As Tish’s parents, Colman Domingo and now Golden Globe-winner Regina King are given the most traditional acting showcases, wrestling with a world that repeatedly thwarts their best intentions. But its Jenkin’s scenes with little dialogue that seem to sing. A primarily visual director, he goes big in the name of art, unafraid to announce his story with the language of color and body movement and camera composition. The score by composer Nicholas Britell lets jazz horns croon with equal parts gloom and sultry New York mystique, giving so much voice to the characters’ internal emotion you might expect a real, Bernstein-style musical to begin. In the pivotal scene of the film, set in a bodega, the words hardly matter. You can understand every emotional beat with gesture and the rush of the score, in the same instinctually human way even a child understands “Swan Lake.”