Hidden Figures

[zico]

7/10.

A good straightforward workaday film which has a little-known story to tell, does it simply and well, and is entertaining.

It's about 3 very talented and intelligent black women working in the early NASA space programme, and their struggles to get respect, recognition and reward for their abilities in a time and place when "Coloured" restrooms and buses were the norm, and women were undervalued. They each have 3 different approaches to progressing in their careers, and there's a clever opening scene to the film where their differing characters are clearly brought out in an encounter with a traffic cop.
It's set in the early space race (around 1961) when the USSR was ahead of USA in the space race, and NASA was under pressure to catch up.

The film has sympathetic main characters, some good scenes, and doesn't fall into the trap of being over-preachy or moralistic. It doesn't exactly have a whole lot of dramatic tension, but the story chugs along well with some minor sub-plots to keep your interest engaged.
No "wow" factor, but it's a feel-good story with engaging characters.

I expect the film will resonate particularly with anyone who is clearly bright, articulate and talented but has been overlooked in favour of a "ruling class" and had to fight to get past unconscious (or conscious) bias on grounds on sex, age, race, disability, accent, class or any other of the lazy shortcuts that people use.

[Paultry]

Last Monday I saw Hidden Figures and The Founder.

Both set in USA at similar time periods. Interestingly, the race bias clearly evident in the former film was noticeably absent in the latter. I know its only entertainment but I'm always intrigued when history seems to get distorted. Paul