Racism in the movies, particularly surrounding the Civil Rights era, has been varied in its treatment of the subject.
We get the overt, harsh style of films like 12 Years a Slave, or Mississippi Burning and we contrast this with the upbeat yet sincere comments with movies like Hairspray and The Help.
Hidden Figures meets somewhere down the middle, but it exists on its own terms.
Katherine Johnson (Taranji P. Henson) is the mathematical genius who is shunted to the coloured computer section at NASA, along with fellow colleagues Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer in another Oscar nominated performance) and Mary Jackson ( singer Janelle Monae). These women are brilliant with numbers, but they are segregated from the rest of the workers and they are constantly under-resourced and undervalued. Dorothy does the work of a supervisor but has no formal recognition. Mary has the capacity to be an engineer but has to change with the ever increasing job requirements that bar her from applying. Katherine is the first of the trio to cross into the white section of the space program that will see a man orbit the Earth, but she is constantly barred from meetings and other important information that will enable her to do her job.
It’s an exciting time yet anxious time in history. Director Theodore Melfi captures the excitement of the Space Race, cutting between reenacted and real footage of tests and press conferences between Russian and American astronauts. We also see the civil rights freedom rides and sit-ins that occurred two years before Martin Luther King would deliver his iconic “I Have a Dream Speech.” We are led down to the garden path to liberation and progression, but boy, there are weeds on the trail. Kevin Costner plays boss Mr Harrison, whose numbers that require crunching are so complex that they “don’t even exist yet” and Big Bang‘s Jim Parsons plays Head Engineer Paul Stafford (yes, Sheldon is an actual scientist) who is so perturbed by Katherine’s being there you almost feel him seething from your seat in the audience.
Well behaved women rarely make history as it has been said, and through the subtle yet effective persistence of all three women they are able to push past the barriers of uncertainty and skepticism. The past is by no means rose tinted, but it is seen through a lens that is harsh and yet forgiving.
Hidden Figures shines in its subtely. Understated moments like running to the bathroom on the other side of the complex or not having any coffee in the “coloured” thermostat speak volumes. All three women hold strong, defiant performances and their humour and style even in the most demoralising of circumstances is truly uplifting.
You won’t want to hide from this one.
Verdict: 8.5/10
20th Century Fox
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