Hidden Figures (2016)
Directed by Theodore Melfi
The untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – brilliant African-American women working at NASA and serving as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history – the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.
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10 films that influenced Hidden Figures
What critics say influenced Hidden Figures
In its best moments, Hidden Figures supplies the same work-the-problem thrills of Apollo 13 (if not the cosmological rapture of The Right Stuff), and benefits enormously from Kevin Costner in full lefty righteous-rage mode as the NASA director who smashes the sign off a segregated bathroom: “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color!”
An incredibly timely and well-told story that serves as a nice counterpart to 1983’s “The Right Stuff,” the film shines a light on the African-American women who helped put Glenn into space during a time when neither African-Americans nor women were given those kinds of opportunities.
Melfi also makes sly visual allusions to iconic moments from The Right Stuff : Johnson does a lot of running around NASA’s Langley, Virginia, campus à la Jeff Goldblum in that other film, though for wildly different reasons.
So it goes for the black women pioneers at NASA at its number-crunching offices in Virginia during the Mercury spaceflight program — the same one chronicled in “The Right Stuff.”
If you lived through the early days of the U.S. space program–or saw or read “The Right Stuff”–you know names like Alan Shepard and John Glenn and the other heroic astronauts who were part of the Mercury program to put an American astronaut in space.
A distaff counterpart to The Right Stuff (1983), this exuberant, inspiring drama tells the fact-based story of three black women who strove for upward mobility—both professional and atmospheric—as NASA mathematicians during the JFK era.
It’s relatively easy to show the audience that a character is incredibly gifted at music or sports, but how do you show that a character is good at math? Darren Aronofsky pulled off that trick in his 1998 debut ?, but since most movies aren’t made by Aronofsky, most of them fail at this: Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, Proof .
If we're going to be subjected to the milquetoast-to-shitty likes of A Beautiful Mind (which the film strongly evokes in its opening scene, earning my immediate ire) and The Imitation Game every autumn, we might as well ask that they represent a fully diverse cross-section of humanity, but equality in mediocrity is hardly the stuff of inspirational cinema.
At times, it ends up appearing like a cross between A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13—even borrowing one of the dramatic third act beats from the Ron Howard film—but the results are a feel-good inspirational story that rarely feels preachy, even if it also never goes out of its way to challenge the viewer.
Films such as A Beautiful Mind, The Theory of Everything, and The Imitation Game all lean in some way on the idea of the inaccessible genius—a mathematician, computer scientist, and theoretical physicist all somehow removed from the world.
In its best moments, Hidden Figures supplies the same work-the-problem thrills of Apollo 13 (if not the cosmological rapture of The Right Stuff), and benefits enormously from Kevin Costner in full lefty righteous-rage mode as the NASA director who smashes the sign off a segregated bathroom: “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color!”
At times, it ends up appearing like a cross between A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13—even borrowing one of the dramatic third act beats from the Ron Howard film—but the results are a feel-good inspirational story that rarely feels preachy, even if it also never goes out of its way to challenge the viewer.
As vital as these scenes are, it’s practically groan-inducing to watch Henson — a talented actress whose exaggerated portrayal of a math whiz suggests Michelle Pfeiffer’s smart, yet haggard pre-Catwoman secretary in “Batman Returns” — awkwardly pantomiming someone with a bladder about to burst, but that’s the broad acting style Melfi encourages, and it’s the kind that inspires spontaneous ovations at the end of implausible monologues.
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And Costner’s late career has often had him playing an EveryAmerican who can be relied on to, as Spike Lee preached, “Do the Right Thing.”
It’s relatively easy to show the audience that a character is incredibly gifted at music or sports, but how do you show that a character is good at math? Darren Aronofsky pulled off that trick in his 1998 debut ?, but since most movies aren’t made by Aronofsky, most of them fail at this: Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, Proof .
Like “American Graffiti” or “The Help,” “Hidden Figures” takes place in a colorful, borderline-kitsch version of the American past.
That leaves Henson, Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in 2009’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” with the more noble role.
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But like the recent “Queen of Katwe” or 2014’s gay-activists-meet-striking-miners bio-dramedy “Pride,” the film’s immensely agreeable real-life story has so much joy and energy, we’re willing to go the predictable distance.
Taken with The Imitation Game and The Man Who Knew Infinity, Hidden Figures also heralds a bona fide trend in Hollywood dramas: the mathematician as hero.