Source: NASA
A mark of a great movie is that you leave the theater thinking you can do great things, too, and that’s how I felt after watching Hidden Figures (2016). The biographies of three NASA computers, as people who carried out calculations were called before the modern term computer referring to a programmable calculating machine, these black woman are shown chasing their dreams – engineering, computer programmer, mathematician for trajectory calculations, children, husbands – and a god damn women’s bathroom that a colored woman can use that’s not a mile away.
It helps to be aware of the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the United States, and its motivations – the segregation and sometimes outright hatred that had existed ever since the American Civil War, despite the sacrifices and dedication of generations of African-Americans in all the major wars, despite the general racism of whites in the armed services.
And the dance around that racism is part of the charm of this movie, the acknowledgment of reality on the ground – and the determination to succeed, because by succeeding they fulfilled their potential, and determined to be full members of society, despite the barriers raised against them.
Of course, we know how the story ends for the official mission, the Friendship 7 flight, which is all the termination of the movie, so there’s little tension. But how the primary character, Katherine Goble (later Johnson), the computer for the mission, reacts when the mission nears catastrophic failure, makes up for that knowledge – and the reaction of a bunch of white pot-bellied engineers and mathematicians is also instructive.
I could go on and on about this film, really, but I shan’t. Just go see it. Or rent it. Do it with friends, and talk about it afterwards.
Strongly Recommended.
