Distance Film Project: Film Reviews sources

My review of 'Hidden Figures' the movie

Shortly put, I would call the movie Hidden Figures an inspiring history lesson with a touch of fantasy twist held within it. When it comes to movies holding historical truth to them about important figures from the past, especially when it comes to the realms of math and sciences which advanced humans to modern times, viewers can expect a tale of large ego. Somehow, in movies, the concept of showing brilliant minds - men of genius whether in science or math - they all seem somehow aloof from the world. The film, Hidden Figures, the story doesn’t quite seem so inaccessible. It is an amazing story but not one of ego. It shows struggle and willpower, but not any singular person’s story. Set in 1960s Virginia, the movie follows a trio of African American women who work for NASA through calculations - having helped in many space missions including John Glenn’s orbit around Earth. The three main women portrayed, Katherine Goble later Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan were all amazing mathematicians and engineers despite starting their careers in America during a time of segregation, facing discrimination both at school and work. Somehow, Hidden Figures manages to take a different turn than what many movies have attempted in the past - looking closely at the main person within their role in a community. It doesn’t focus only on what these women did within their jobs, but offers a look into their lives and makes them ‘human’. Directed by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) and supported by the writer of the nonfiction book holding an identical title by Margot Lee Shetterly, the movie acknowledges individual skill and brilliance, yet it also reveals the way the characters lift one another and others up. They’re experts in their chosen specialties, but giving with their time, energy, and most important patience in a way that gives a feeling of it being humane but not saintly. From the beginning, the movie makes it clear there is no singular heroine that it will be focusing on, but rather a group of three. It is seen, however, that Katherine has a hint more interest and therefore gets the foremost screen time. Despite that, her story is tightly knit together with those of Mary and Dorothy - the latter becoming ASA’s first African American manager and the initial NASA’s first black female engineer. The beginning of the movie starts out, as vocalized by Mary when closely following a police escort, in 1961, with the three women a part of NASA’s human “computers” - women charged with doing calculations before the use of digital machines. Just learning and checking up on this idea being true made me laugh to myself - whatever did the world do before technology? Despite being employed, it was thanks to Virginia’s segregations laws they were still separate: the colored “computers” with a separate building. I would think it was because of the pressure of the Soviet Union already making leaps and the U.S wanting to get ahead that they allowed colored women to work there in general. It is thanks to her expertise in mathematics that Katherine is assigned a special task group to get Glenn into orbit… Her first step into the new building revealing she is the only brown face in the room. Katherine is closest the all the excitement, but the movie’s scope broadens to look beyond her, switching to Mary who battles layers of unfair hurdles in her mission to become an engineer, to Dorothy who fights for a far overdue promotion and the survival of her team of computers when faced with the growing intelligence of technologies. The ladies are forced to constantly think ahead of their, usually white male, higher-ranked colleagues. For Dorothy, that involves learning a new language of technology. For Mary, it is solving an engineering problem seen in wind-tunnel experiments involving the space capsule. And for the brilliant Katherine, it means Calculating narrow launch windows for space windows. Each woman, in her own way, adds onto the broader strokes of the growing success of both women and colored people at large. At several points in the movie, there are emotionally moving actions: the stares over getting a simple cup of coffee from a machine the white people use since there was no other by Katherine, the speech of where Katherine has to run off to every day because there are no colored bathrooms for her to use, the breaking of a sign marked ‘colored bathrooms’ by a high ranked white boss, the march of the ‘colored computers’ as Dorothy leads them to the BPI machine looking like a civil rights march, even the constant repetition of small scenes meant to display the advancement or change the world and a character has gone through. In the earlier beginnings of the film, Dorothy shares her mixed feelings about Katherine’s prestigious new assignment. “Any upward movement is movement for us all, just isn't movement for me.,” she mentions after running into her own problems at work. It’s a subtle, but major point, one of many mind provoking lines in the film. It wasn’t that she was jealous, in fact, Dorothy is a very Martin Luther King Jr esque and mothering type of person, so clearly is proud of Katherine’s work, she is merely pointing out a relatable fact: just because one of the pillars has been created does not mean our bridge is built. This feeling of community, shown most strongly I believe in Dorothy by her guarding of her team’s jobs and constant lesson sharing and leadership, is revealed in all these women as the film shows hints of their personal life in family and relationships - each of the characters seeming to develop for the better in a touching way. Even shown at work when Katherine gets to the parking lot late and shows her two friends have been there waiting for her despite it being dark out. It’s small, but it gives a connection and down to Earth relatability to these characters. More so when one looks at the constant racism and sexism these characters face daily. Hidden Figures does not hide the way it attempts to entertain its audience as well as to teach them, giving it moments of cheer and applause for moments of victory, to loud groans and shaking heads at enraging acts of racism seen (there are many) all meant to be a bit of comedic relief to the intense issues at hand. One, of course, can not forget the rest of the all-star cast such as Kevin Costner, Katherine’s boss and eventual ally, Jim Parson who was a replacement for the real Katherines experience of having a colleague barely able to handle her presence, Kirsten Dunst who was Dorothy’s boss and the picture-perfect of “racist-who-thinks-she’s-not”, and plenty more interesting roles throughout the turn of the movie giving a joyful dynamic when all put together. While the movie doesn’t seem to push many boundaries, it does tell a certain type of story where it doesn’t really have to. The film does seem to avoid the most obvious missteps of historical movies that deal with race, however, it never tries to give viewers the idea that racism has been “solved,” leaving its white characters to exist on a constantly shifting spectrum of racial enlightenment rather than immediately accepting or changing a view the people of the time would have grown up with. I did manage to discover that the trio and even the entire colored ‘computers’ team, the people’s problems expressed in the film were only a fraction of the ones who worked in the space program. It was, able to explain a few of the experiences of African Americans who worked in NASA at the time. I personally would love to learn of the different women throughout history who made a name for themselves - talented and strong with a brilliant mind. Doubtless, even today, there are still some barriers not only for women but of different races… In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Hidden Figures, the sisterhood to the spread of spotlight, to the overshadowing true history and power held behind it.