Two *love*ly stories for Valentine’s Day week.
Hidden Figures (2016; MAX or your library)
Three black female mathematicians make John Glenn’s launch into orbit a reality, from behind the scenes. This movie excels at telling a true story as a movie, a popcorn movie. It isn’t a documentary or hung up on every historical detail. Not everything these three historical figures did happened at the same time as it does in the movie—but it did all happen. I am sure the white co-worker relationships are invented for the movie, but that doesn’t hinder the true story. It’s wholesome, well-acted and well put together. It has a light tone that keeps its serious encounters with racism and implicit bias from feeling accusatory. It feels welcoming.
Happy Galentine’s Day.
For sensitive viewers: A few strong swear words. A scene with celebratory alcohol. Very brief suggestive dialogue. Explicit racial discrimination including threat of violence.
Bright Road (1953; YouTube)
A young schoolteacher narrates her first year at a black elementary school and the personal transformations of a problem student. This movie is strange. It’s a lot of time in the schoolroom watching children. Strangely light and serious at once. Strangely healing. Healing encounters with nature. Love and kindness bring out the best in us, but not in a naïve way.
It makes me think of all those other movies from the same era featuring children and animals: Lassie Come Home (1943), National Velvet (1944), Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1946), The Secret Garden (1949), So Dear to My Heart (1949), Good-Bye, My Lady (1956), Old Yeller (1957)—and after Vietnam, Sounder (1972). All these movies have a haunting sense of trying to pick up the pieces, trying to build a good and beautiful life again after the horrors of World War II. (The Boy with the Green Hair (1948) makes this explicit.) Bright Road carries the same tone, but with a little less fantasy than the isolated settings of these individual coming-of-age stories. Here, the child isn’t perfect; it’s not just about him, because he grows up amidst a full classroom of realistic children; and no animal teaches him to love—people do.
Harry Belafonte, who was in last week’s movie, plays the school principal. That odd scene where he’s just sitting in the dark playing his guitar draws on his popularity as a singer. When he wasn’t acting or speaking up for Civil Rights, Harry was singing. In fact, his 1956 album Calypso out-sold any solo performer’s album to date—the first to sell a million copies. (You can read a neat biography here.)
For sensitive viewers: Serious illness—will someone die? A dangerous situation involving bees.
Nathan’s Writing Update
I just submitted an academic article to PMLA, the top journal in the humanities. I’m expecting a rejection with useful comments on how I can make it better, but you never know—wish me success! My article is about how literature, film, and philosophy, from Martin Buber to It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) to All in the Family (1971-1979) to Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) to Inside Out 2 (2024) share a pattern of I and Thou—seeing one another and the earth as partners in dialogue, pursuing a world of mutual care. It's a little dense, but if you want to read it, let me know. 😉