In an age of superheroes with countless sequels and even television spinoffs, it's hard to immortalize figures that aren't white or male. Especially when you can't buttress them with smash-bang special effects. Especially when they have to be based on real people doing real things, and the main thing of those things is math.
Hidden Figures does that, though, and does it well. Concerning the real-life heroes behind the US space race, the film follows its three black women as they rise up in the white-male-dominated world of NASA and Virginia and, through their brilliance and diligence, ultimately enable the first American to orbit Earth. Most importantly, the film never uses conventional means of shame, punishment, or even much tribulation to torment these women as a result of their skin color or gender. They are consistently brave, smart, beautiful, and successful in their endeavors, and are never victimized by the camera or screenplay. Even these days, it's hard to find such a film. To be sure, we see the evils of segregation and more than once the visceral hatred of white people against our heroes, but the film by no means normalizes those moments. Try finding that in many other mainstream movies.
Some might argue that the film plays a lot safe, and with good reason. It's all very PG, and while moments may take some time explaining to the kids, it's a clean and wholesome way to spend your family movie night. While that may not excite some of our palates, it is by no means a bad thing here, where the technical aspects of the film are so keen and deliberate they rival major awards contenders. Sometimes the editing is distracting and sometimes the cinematography bland, but when the story is as rich and engaging, the themes timely and urgent, and the performances nuanced and fun, who cares?
Hidden Figures, for all its feel-good, Hallmarkian packaging of sentimentality, is easily one of the best movies of the year simply because it does what no other film has done this year. Sure, it was directed by a white guy, and sure, it plays a lot of white sympathy cards, but in our current sociopolitical climate, the more white people use their privilege to create art like this (and the more white people go to experience this kind of art), the better. The last two films I saw in a theater as crowded as the one for this film were Sully and Passengers, and frankly those were both full of white people applauding for white things. This time it was only mostly white people, and they broke into applause in exactly three scenes: when the boss took a crowbar to the "Colored" sign over the bathroom, when Janelle Monae proclaimed her right to ogle fine men in every color, and when Taraji P Henson told her boss to act like a boss. Nothing like a whole lotta black girl magic to start the new year out right!
I'll happily sit in a theater like that again.
*NOTE*
I was shocked when, during the opening scene for the film, subtitles indicate that Henson's character, Katherine Johnson, was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, just a few miles from where I lived in my adolescence. I had never heard of her before, nor had I heard about her story. I'd heard loads about Homer Hickam, and he was from an even smaller town in a nearby county. After I went home and read more about Mrs Johnson, I found out she had pursued graduate studies at WVU and helped to desegregate the program. How had I not heard about this?
Then I came across this article, and I hope you check it out. One of my favorite undergrad professors is working to install a statue of Katherine on my old campus, West Virginia Wesleyan College, to inspire the students, visitors, and local community, and the project can use your help!
IMDb: Hidden Figures
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