Hidden Figures (2016)

Director: Theodore Melfi

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spenser, Janelle Monáe, et al.

Reasons not to watch this film

     This is an example that clearly shows what a "bad" melodrama is. I mean "bad" in a sense that this film does not stimulate any cinematic imagination. It is a story about three black women who overcame racial discriminations in the space race era. You cannot have a doubt about the idea since it is clear on the poster and the trailer. The problem is how the filmmakers unfold the narrative. First, the timings of narrative devices are conventional. Obviously, you cannot blame the director for putting excessive musics at emotional points in a timely manner since it is a rule between him and the audience. But if it is repeated too much, due to too much of narrative fragmentation, that is a different matter. It's like the filmmakers tried not to lose any possible melodramatic point to evoke the audience's emotion. Especially when the film reaches the point where Katherine faces one more racial discrimination before her final triumph, that moment made me fed up with her adversity and weeping. It is not important even if that event actually happened to the real model since no director keeps full fidelity to the original.

Reasons to watch this film

     Despite such typicality, the aspiration of space still moved me. That's why Mary Jackson's quote before the judge is appropriate and has an impact. I want to prolong this review but my idea is too simple to add something more. Space travel is the real modern myth of America and to depict its undiscovered participants is still exciting, because it shows the blood and sweat they made behind the stage. Watch the eighth episode of From the Earth to the Moon, if you want to feel a similar  degree of dramatization of undramatic & mundane life. Works like this and Hidden Figure insist life is still worth to live. In other words, this film has a kind of clear optimism that the films in the 1990s had. Even if it might look outdated, it is still a virtue, isn't it?