Virginia Postrel, Columnist

The Best Picture for What America Needs Right Now

The women of "Hidden Figures" are the heroines, but the country that recognized their talents is equally honored.

February 3, 2017 at 2:00 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

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"Hidden Figures" pulled off a surprise victory at the Screen Actors Guild awards Sunday night, making it the most serious challenger to Oscar favorite "La La Land" for best picture.

An enjoyable if overpraised musical, "La La Land" is the sort of Hollywood tale Academy voters love. But "Hidden Figures," a drama about three black women working as NASA mathematicians in the early days of the space race, has an edge of its own. It’s a movie for anxious times, offering patriotic balm for the fractured body politic and even throwing in a tale of career resilience in the face of automation.