Hidden Figures sets the right tone for 2017

After the political rancor and racial divisiveness of 2016, Hidden Figures (rated PG for mild language) feels like the perfect movie in which to invest our hopes for a more reconciled, forbearing country in 2017.

The true story of three black women in the segregated south who used their mathematical, engineering, and programming smarts to help launch NASA’s first orbital mission feels like a tale you should already know. But I suspect for most viewers, these women’s contributions to American greatness in the space race will come as a revelation.

All three start as temporary employees of NASA’s “colored computers” division. Today that sounds like some kind of decorative laptop option, but in the age before PCs, both titles referred to people. Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), a widow raising three girls alone, excels in analytical geometry and slowly becomes an integral (if, at first, unrecognized) member of the Space Task Group, which must invent new math to confront the challenge of sending a man into orbit. Her best friends, Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) and Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), aren’t recognized as prodigies quite as easily. With emotional intelligence to match their academic prowess, each woman must shrewdly carve out niches in a field dominated by white men.

The beauty of all three stories is that they make an argument for a color-blind, gender-blind meritocracy without ever lecturing or patting modern audiences on the back for being more enlightened than their 1960s counterparts. The “white savior” element of movies like 2011’s The Help has been justifiably criticized. But, of course, The Help was fiction. Hidden Figures isn’t, so, interestingly, it’s not much of a factor here.

Certainly the racism of the time is prevalent, but there’s little focus on which of the white characters is going to be the women’s tolerant and open-minded defender. Instead, the story emphasizes which is going to be the most pragmatic. If Space Task Group boss Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) wants to launch his rocket, he simply must have the best mathematician he can find. And he’ll need that mathematician to use the restroom down the hall, rather than waste her time running across the compound to segregated facilities.

The film shows prejudice and inequality as not only immoral, but ineffective. We can’t have a thriving space program or a thriving nation if we hold deserving people back and lift undeserving people up simply because of the color of their skin.

Equally refreshing is that director Theodore Melfi lets what should be an all-ages, uplifting story actually be all-ages and uplifting. It’s so rare to see quality PG filmmaking that isn’t aimed at children, you almost forget how wonderful the experience can be. It sounds corny, but this truly is the kind of movie Hollywood excelled at in its Golden Age. With the exception of some mild language, there’s nothing to keep any viewers away, and nothing should when it reinforces the best in our national principles while telling a funny, inspiring, and uniquely American tale.

As the first major release of 2017, it’s a little early to call Hidden Figures the feel-good movie of the year, but let’s at least hope it sets the tone.