Hidden Figures is the new pic about the real-world human calculators who helped create the math equations needed to send men into orbit and return them safely. In that the calculators in question were women in 1961 is one thing, that they were black women was a whole other thing. This is based on a real events that were never promoted as part of the space race narrative.
The film stars Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae, and Octavia Spencer as three of the women, each with her own specialty and story. The main focus is on Henson who helps find the math required to get John Glenn out of orbit and back to the Earth alive. Monae wants to be an engineer but can only do so by attending an all-white school to get the necessary credentials. Spencer wants to be the manager of the calculator pool of black women and then, when she sees automation in the form of an IBM main-frame threatening her job, learns Fortran and how to program the computer.
The movie is earnest and good-natured, crowd-pleasing, and thoughtful. It handles the inherent racism of 1961 even at a place as nominally progressive as NASA in an interesting and, frankly, refreshing way. NASA, after all, did hire these black women and if they have to have separate bathrooms and eateries, well, that was the time. Those were the facts. The movie does a very good job of showing the every-day, unthinking racism of the white men in black ties – none of them are typical Hollywood monsters. We don’t get blatant, grand-standing monsters denouncing the colored girls in their midst… we get side-glances, discomfort, a sign on a coffee maker the next day, and men who, uncomfortably, point out things aren’t just done this way. It’s racism, but handled without the KKK, the robes, and the burning crosses we see in a lot of Hollywood films about the 1960s.
This is an important and interesting story to tell and a guy would have to be pretty terrible to call it out for flaws, right? Well, yeah. The main problem I had was that the movie was predictable to a fault. If there was a group of men standing around trying to figure something out, you know that one of the black women will step up and unfailingly resolve the problem, making the men look foolish or stupid. this happened over and over again to the point where it made NASA look completely incompetent. I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in the movie, that moments like these happened, but its desire to be a Hollywood crowd-pleaser went a little too far. At some point, I started doubting the historical accuracy of the events which was not what the film-makers intended.
However, despite this, it manages to also be just a damn good movie about smart people doing smart work. The movie can be looked at as both a historical picture that shines a light on a forgotten superhero of science, but also a look at a side of NASA we barely see. Normally, we either get the astronauts or the men in the control room, but rarely the pencil-necked geeks who figured out how to get it all done. So kudos.
So, yeah, despite a minor gripe about the story structure and overall historical accuracy, this is still a really good movie. It handles depictions of racism in a subtle yet direct way, avoiding many of the cliches Hollywood would normally inject. it covers a time period and a job that is rarely ever shown on screen. It is fairly exciting and certainly heart-warming. No reason, in my opinion, people shouldn’t see it.
Score: 86