What’s the most underrated movie you’ve ever watched?
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The 2016 film “Hidden Figures” told the story of women of colour who played a pivotal role in the NASA Space program.
While the original book spoke of many of the women in the space program, the film mashed them into three primary characters.
The film earned the Screen Actors Guild and National Board Review Awards for Best Film Ensemble and the Best Film Awards in the NAACP Image and BET Awards; but fell short at the Academy and BAFTA Awards.
The film starred Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monet, Jim Parsons, and Kevin Costner; all powerful actors in their own right. But, even that was not enough to move Hollywood!
Having watched the film several times; it never gets old and is just as powerful the tenth time as it was the first. In some ways it is even more powerful the more it is viewed because there is always some point or moment that was missed earlier.
About getting America’s space program up and running as they battle with Russia in the historic “Space Race”, the segregation of the era could not be left out but was not the main focus of the film.
But even so, there were some very powerful moments in the film…
After Taraji P Henson’s character Katherine Goebbels gives her speech about having to travel a quarter of a mile just to go to the bathroom because there are no bathrooms for her in the building; Kevin Costner’s character Mr. Harrison tears down the “whites only” sign over the ladies bathroom. He proclaims, “here at NASA we all pee the same colour” and tells Katherine to go anywhere she wants, preferably closest to her desk!
And when everyone is lined up outside to see the astronauts when they arrive, segregated; someone tries to steer Alan Shepherd into the building after meeting some of the white employees. He turns away and says they haven’t met all the people and heads directly for the employees of colour and talks with Katherine, Mary, and Dorothy.
Later in the film, when the engineers first use the new IBM computer (it takes up a whole room) to “calculate the numbers”; they don’t add up. Shepherd tells Mr. Harrison to get the “smart girl” (Katherine) to check the numbers. Katherine calculates “the numbers” by hand and goes beyond what the computer had calculated.
When the new computer first arrives, Dorothy realizes what it means for the human “computers” who do all the calculating by hand and takes it upon herself to learn all she can about the computer. In her journey of education she needs a book that teaches the new computer language Fortran. She cannot find what she needs in the “coloured section” of the library and goes to the area in the “white section” to get what she needs. She is escorted out of the library; along with her two small boys. Sitting in the back of the bus she tells the boys if they act right, they are right.
Before being kicked out of the library, Dorothy slips the book inside her purse. When she takes the book out on the bus, one of the boys accuses her of stealing it. She replies that she pays taxes and her taxes paid for everything in that library; adding, “you can’t steal what you already paid for”!
Dorothy not only goes on to learn all she can about the computer, she becomes the supervisor and teaches the women who go on to operate it – “coloured” and “white”!
The “powers that be” who determine the award winners totally missed how powerful the film “Hidden Figures” really was; not just for history, but for the future of America.