 |
| Source: Imdb |
This thrilling drama about the contributions of black women to
NASA’s space race certainly has a lot of heft. While discrimination and racism
are one of the main issues that the film addresses, it is not put at centre
stage in an on-the-nose way. Rather, it is quite a subtle undercurrent that
infuses everything with a frustrated kind of tension. The plot itself – putting
a human into space – is gripping in itself, but watching these ladies tackle
the challenges presented to them with brains and poise was even better. The
film also illustrates clearly how biased people are: One of the pivotal scenes,
with Katherine calculating in front of a group of military machos, only works
because, deep down, they are all aware that the maths she is demonstrating is
neigh impossible and requires exceptional intellect. If they didn’t know that, seeing a black lady is
doing it would immediately make assume that it could be done by a trained
monkey, and the director would be totally discredited for claiming his
department needs time to do the maths. Everybody seems to be aware, though, of
the complex feats these women are performing.
All actors
did a good job. I particularly liked Kevin Costner’s performance as program director
Harris and loved to hate Jim Parsons prejudiced asshole colleague. Octavia
Spencer was great as competent supervisor looking out for her girls, too.
On the
technical side, this piece did well in visually portraying the 1960ies. Good
costumes, nice cars and flawless sets. Editing could have been a little more
decisive, though, as there were shots and scenes which seemed superfluous. It
was obvious that the original “director’s cut” of this must have been much
longer and was then trimmed down to just the right runtime. Still: the tension
was definitely there throughout. Lastly, I expected more of the score, but it
was notable mostly by its absence.
4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment