In the real world, it’s normal people, not superhero’s, that bring about justice and change. Rachel Feldman, a writer and director, takes us through the elegy of a remarkable American woman in “Lilly”. The movie depicts how Lilly Ledbetter, the daughter of a poor farmer, bravely sued Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co for gender based discrimination while single handedly raising her children. She is the primary reason behind the Fair Pay Act of 2009 which ensures equal payment regardless of gender. Unfortunately, Ledbetter’s legacy is not as celebrated as it should be which reminds one of the same legacy the movie “Lilly,” attempts to accomplish, but instead leaves the audience baffled at its attempt to blend genres.
As one would expect, Feldman’s film starts off on the ‘wrong foot’ as the tone sets itself as a collage of life footage and narration. Patricia Clarkson who appears to be shy on and off stage plays Ledbetter who is shown taking the floor at the Democratic Convention prior to Obama’s election. As Clarkson is zoomed in on by the camera, Feldman intertwines the speech with shots of the attendees, including Joe Biden, who are fervently applauding her comments. As astounding as this sounds, it could produce some results with some more focused editors. The outcome leads too ‘Lilly’ is is out of place revealing that the audience is in for a compilation of reenactment scenes stashed with impressive archival footage of modern history and not a movie.
While “Lilly” isn’t exactly that, it definitely comes close to it, especially during its first, laborious half where Ledbetter’s career at Goodyear between 1979 and the late 90’s is sketched out in a disturbing outline, while she chases the corporate ladder in a severely masculine world. In spite of incessant bullying sometimes even violent that she and fellow female employees often face, Ledbetter manages to make a name for herself in the company’s management program (She was the first woman to do that). She sacrificed nearly 20 years of her life, committing to the company and at that time, doing some of the best work in the country. But even when the needle shifts a bit towards her in the form of some well-earned promotions, Ledbetter always seems to find herself demoted back to the factory floor, along with the dismal reality that more and more men who are doing half the work that she has put in, are receiving these lavish promotions.
The path Ledbetter achieved, complemented by her deeply motivating romance with her husband Charles (John Benjamin Hickey), is deeply cinematic. However, she seemed to want to ruin the entire thing by not only using archival footage of Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was supporting Ledbetter at the time, but incorporating her a strategy that, as she dubs it, renders Mark Feldman’s material foolproof. The result is increasingly miserable during the viewing and suggests that Feldman and his co-writer Adam Prince do not believe the audience is capable of comprehending the finer details surrounding Ledbetter’s unambiguous case.
In this case, Lilly does not benefit from Ledbetter’s work-life balance problems, and those scenes are immediately followed by an RBG’s discussion of what that might signify for a woman. The most disruptive of these occurs after Ledbetter tries to discover the tangible reasons why Goodyear has treated her with discrimination since day one. Eventually (and shortly before she gets abruptly fired from the position), she discovers a cryptic note in her locker, which explains to her how much she makes, which is only about fifty percent of what her male colleagues earn. Shortly after, the film zooms in on an interview with RBG where she discusses the same anonymous note Ledbetter had found.
Elsewhere, the film’s muted colors flashback scenes from the middle are, inappropriately and unattractively, muted and loaded with grey this is a strange artistic choice that is thematically silent. The struggles of Ledbetter with her aggressive son and her successes as a professional dancer are also given the lowest gravity possible. For the latter, she is often depicted in the process of dancing on a dance floor which in no way looks like a professional dance floor.
Fortunately, ‘Lilly‘ manages to find its feet (albeit retroactively) when Ledbetter, alongside her fierce attorney Jon Goldfarb (Thomas Sadoski) finally takes Goodyear to court. The part when she wins her case initially, only to lose the long game in the House and Supreme Court (even with RBG’s dissenting opinions), is quite appealing, albeit mostly due to their informational nature rather than the awkwardly expository dialogues and the country music tracks which blatantly caricature the film’s themes.
Eventually, Ledbetter was never issued her settlement from Goodyear, but did redefine, albeit in the twenty-first century, her notion of equal pay for equal work. There is an incredibly profound and winning nonfiction film detailing Ledbetter’s life story as an mid-section American woman which captures her spirit, or alternatively a heartwarming narrative feature (like “On the Basis of Sex”) with a lot of charming energy. Sadly, “Lilly” does not provide us with either of the benefits one of both of these films would have captured.
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