HAZED REVIEWS THE MOVIE HIDDEN FIGURES
by Hazed
Hidden Figures is the story of three black women scientists who worked at NASA during the space race in 1962, when the US was desperate to get John Glenn into orbit around the Earth (and back safely) before the Russians could beat them to it.
The three were all outstanding mathematicians but they faced prejudice from the white male establishment – because they were black and because they were women. But as the film shows, all three overcame the discrimination to achieve notable firsts. Katherine Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson deserve to have their stories told, and the three actesses who take on the roles do them proud: Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.
The focus of the film is on Henson, as Katherine Johnson, a maths genius who gets bumped up from the blacks-only section at NASA’s HQ in Virginia and given the job of checking the calculations on space-flight trajectories. Naturally, the men whose work she is checking are hostile and she has to fight every inch of the way to get accepted. She is helped by the section boss, played by Kevin Costner, who realises her potential.
She also gets a touching love story although this is very much secondary to her work, and quite right too.
Spencer plays Dorothy Vaughan, who is acting as the supervisor of the black women employed to do calculations before an IBM computer was installed. She hits a brick wall of racism when she asks to be given the job title, and the pay, of the work she is actually doing, but she becomes a key part of the operation of the new computer and eventually wins the recognition and status she deserves.
Monáe is a frustrated engineer who gets refused a place on NASA’s engineering program because she doesn’t have the extra qualifications they suddenly decide are required. The only place that offers the right courses is a whites-only college, so she goes to court to get the right to study there. She wins over an initially-hostile judge in a barn-storming court room scene.
All of this is set against the excitement of the first American rockets to go into space, and footage of the launches brings a lump to the throat for any space enthusiast. Computer geeks, too, will get a kick out of seeing the first massive IBM mainframe arrive at NASA and be too big to fit through the door, as well as the way FORTRAN takes on a significance in the struggle the women face to be taken seriously.
All three actresses are brilliant, and it’s a lovely change to see three women as the stars of a film – let alone three black women! See, films don’t have to have men as the stars to be successful.
Hidden Figures was quite rightly nominated for a best picture Oscar, and it’s been raking it in at the box office. Critics and the public alike rate this film, and when I saw it today, the audience broke into spontaneous applause at the end. That hardly ever happens in the cinema!
If you’re interested in the history of the space race, or the civil rights movement, or women scientists – or all three – go and see Hidden Figures. It’s brilliant.
