Equivocal

Rating: 7/10 (23 July 2019)

"Hidden Figures," I must first say, is a perfect title; the double meaning encapsulates the two main thrusts of the picture: first, revealing the figures of African-American women whose importance to the space program at NASA has been hidden by historical racial and sexual marginalization and, second, discovering the figures of mathematics and engineering needed for the success of the Space Race. Ultimately, the equation proposed here is that the STEM disciplines are an equalizing and vital force societally. It's similar to the statement in "Lincoln" (2012) using Euclid to elaborate on equality and truth, except here that proof is derived from differential equations, including Euler's method. Indeed, that's a laudatory message, but the title is not the only factor in this movie to be an equivocality. "Hidden Figures" also reveals some of the same unfortunate tropes and mischaracterizations seen time and again by Hollywood in dealing with racial and societal issues. Although excellent in theory, many but not every number in this picture adds up.
I don't necessarily care about simplifying history with composite characters, fictions to illustrate items of historical relevance and jiggering the timelines to make for a cohesive cinematic narrative, but I detest tropes such as the white male savior and noble bigot--employed to assuage the audience of any fears that their society might not be so much more enlightened now or, perish the thought, they themselves might not be. Such avoidance of challenging the spectator solves nothing. "Hidden Figures" is certainly not the worst offender in this respect; the last Best Picture winner, "Green Book" (2018), for instance, is almost entirely comprised of this rubbish and from the perspective of its white protagonist, to boot. Nevertheless, we get ahistorical scenes such as Kevin Costner--the same white savior from "Dances with Wolves" (1990) no less--integrating bathrooms by knocking down the sign designating one of them for "colored" women. Other characters who display personal and institutional racism are likewise inevitably redeemed as they help to further promote the well-being of the black women, from the police officer escorting them to work to a workplace gesture of kindness as simple as bringing one a cup of coffee. Outside of a brief library scene, there doesn't appear to be one irredeemable bigot here, which is remarkable for a movie about overcoming prejudice set in 1960s Virginia.
Related to this comforting cinematic hand holding is the modern-day aversion to depicting smoking even for authenticity. If you've seen documentary footage of employees of NASA in the '60s and afore, or experienced that era first hand, it becomes apparent that the hidden figures within this picture are smoke and cigarette-filled ashtrays. Instead, we get Costner chewing gum. It takes some oblivious sanctimony to rid one dangerous habit, which in the grand scheme of things has only become proscribed recently, for concerns of their bad influence, only to continue the dissemination of dangerous tropes privileging white characters, which are older than film itself.
On the other hand, movies have likewise long assumed that scribbling nonsense could be passed off as real mathematics, but "Hidden Figures" reportedly hired mathematician Rudy Horne to consult on the equations pictured here, so that even though the specific computations here aren't exact to history, they're arguably more faithful than the depictions of race and sex, let alone cancer sticks. Moreover, some of the best visuals here involve the repetition of the women displaying their STEM-related talents. The picture begins with a scene of a young Katherine Goble solving a problem on the chalkboard at school that is later referenced when Costner hands Taraji P. Henson a piece of chalk at a meeting concerning John Glenn's upcoming mission to orbit the planet. Another introductory scene establishes Octavia Spencer's Dorothy Vaughan as mechanically gifted in fixing a broken-down car, a skill set she later employs to supervise the new IBM mainframe computers at Langley. Some fine acting led by Henson also helps with the intended feel-good entertainment.
More impressively, however, this is a nice compliment picture to the white-dominant and overtly-masculine "The Right Stuff" (1983), and one of the best shots here is of Spencer leading her fellow human computers down the corridor--referencing a similar shot of the Mercury Seven in the Philip Kaufman film. Even the score adds a new facet to the usual trumpeting in space films. The fact that "Hidden Figures" adds to the representation and the general cosmos of the Space Race picture alone makes it worthwhile. Indeed, despite its faults, it also has the right stuff.