With Astronauts gracing the covers of LIFE and Look and other weekly magazines, the American space program was big news in the ’60s. These brave test pilots were presented as the epitome of American maleness, and the only females we saw who were part of the space program were the women who quilted the multiple layers of fabric for each custom-fitted space suit! Fifty years later, Theodore Melfi’s perfectly named film Hidden Figures brings the unsung heroes of the space program out from the shadows—and we finally discover that several of the mathematical geniuses who made the program a success were female African Americans! In this retelling of the quintessential American fable, those dashing spacemen are little more than passengers aboard a heaving, clunking, fuel-spewing chunk of hardware. The real heroes are the genius “slide-rule-jockey’s-of-color” (beautifully portrayed by Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae), who figured out how to loosen gravity’s inexorable hold on we frail human beings. It’s nice to have a film where the audience cheers for the underlying decency and determined humanity epitomized by the three women combating the solidly built wall of racism, sexism and chauvinism that were signatures for that time and place.
Traditionally, Hollywood biopics have told the stories of people whose names and deeds we already know, but Hidden Figures joins the very small number of well-made films sharing tales about unsung heroes who changed history.
Here’s some other films from this short list:
Iron-Jawed Angels (2004) In the fight for women’s right to vote, in the days before President Wilson’s inaugural, a younger, more militant group of American suffragists (played by Hilary Swank and Frances O’Connor), alienate the movement’s founders with demands for a Constitutional Amendment coupled with public demonstrations and acts of violence.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) In 1931 Australia, 3 mixed-race Aboriginal girls are forcibly taken from their homes and placed in a remote “re-education camp” to learn to be maids and cooks. Escaping, the girls use the fence built to control the millions of feral rabbits to guide them on the 1,500-mile journey home, and use all their skill and daring to avoid capture along the way. Based upon the story of the “stolen generation” told to Doris Pilkington Garimara by her mother, Molly (an engaging Evelyn Sampi), the debate over the morality of Aboriginal relocation continues today.
The Imitation Game (2014) Despite being an “odd duck” and homosexual, a British mathematician (brilliantly played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is assigned to work with other cryptographers to crack the infamous German Enigma Code during WWII.
October Sky (1999) A lyrical, 1957-era coming-of-age-film about a young man (Jake Gyllenhaal) so turned on by having Russia’s Sputnik pass over his West Virginia coal-mining town every 90 minutes he starts experimenting with rockets and ends up as a NASA engineer.
Erin Brockovich (2000) an unemployed single mother (Julia Roberts) starts volunteering for an attorney to pay the fees she owes him. The man eventually assigns her to a case where PG&E has offered to buy a woman’s home. Research uncovers that the company has contaminated the entire town’s groundwater and the resulting lawsuit costs the utility $333 million.
Hotel Rwanda (2004) African tribal genocide erupts in 1998 as Hutus start killing their Tutsi neighbors with guns, machetes, and burning tires. A hotel manager (outstandingly played by Don Chedle),provides shelter for over 1000 terrified Tutsis, and uses flattery, bribery, bluffs and long-distance calls to the hotel’s Belgian owners to try and keep people alive after UN “peacekeepers” decline to intervene.
Deepwater Horizon (2016) It’s April, 2010 when the engineer (Mark Wahlberg) and rig supervisor (Kurt Russell) arrive on BP’s huge oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, and are surprised the inspectors are already leaving. “Did they sign off” the new crew asks, and only get a shrug in reply. They don’t know it yet, but the hand is already dealt for the deadliest, most expensive and most environmentally damaging oil-rig disaster of all time. The heroes are all the people “just doin‘ my job” in face of unimaginable dangers.
