While driving yesterday, my almost 17-year-old niece saw a billboard advertising the movie Hidden Figures and mentioned that she wanted to see it. What better time to catch the newest flick than that night? After scoping out times, we headed out to see this 1960s set flick surrounding the space race.
Based on a non-fiction book by the same name (authored by Margot Lee Shetterly), Hidden Figures follows the story of Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), the African American mathematician employed at NACA (predecessor to NASA) who helped calculate flight trajectories for Project Mercury at the 1969 Apollo 11 Flight to moon. The movie also highlights two other women (Dorothy Vaughan {Octavia Spencer} who went on to be the first African American supervisor and Mary Johnson {Janelle Monáe} who developed training and paved the way for others as she became an aerospace engineer) and their journeys in their time at NACA.
The film highlights a period of intense division in our country – the backdrop of segregation and separation – the irony that the organization on the cusp of the future (think IBM computers that take up an entire two rooms) could also be so deeply entrenched in the past was a unique dichotomy. These three women were part of a segregated group located in the West Area Computers division of Langley Research Center where everything was as divided as ever. The film captures the intensity of the time and highlights the attitudes of a hierarchy that is all its own – and one that we still feel the effects of today.
As each woman advances in her journey, Hidden Figures highlights how success only takes them so far – most poignantly highlighted when Katherine Johnson heads over to join the Space Task Group team for intense calculations – double and triple checking the work of a room full of men – and is still relegated to using the Colored Ladies’ Restroom a half mile away at her old building and is given a separate coffee carafe by which to grab her daily mug. The tension between even the women in this film was palpable – particularly in a moment between Octavia Spencer and Kirsten Dunst (Vivian Mitchell, head of the East Division Computers – white women) as Dunst reaches out because the IBM needs additional programming prior to John Glenn’s launch.
Her dynamic with Al Harrison (played by Kevin Costner), the head of the Space Task Group, is a unique one that seems to highlight that tension while also offering an opportunity for advancement when – after an intense dialogue with Katherine (MUST SEE – Oscar worthy on Taraji P. Henson’s part) – he heads over to the restroom and destroys the sign for the restroom and says that she is welcome to go wherever she chooses, perhaps somewhere closer to where she works.
Hidden Figures showcases these three women as pioneers, mathematicians, wives, mothers, and more, but still held back in one of the most advanced fields of country because of their skin color. And this was how segregated our country was just fifty years ago.
In a time period where our country was unified around the space race, we were still so divided over race – something that truly held back advancement, development, and more. This film helps to shed light on that intense time period (and highlighting the truth of its division), while also giving these women their due for the role they played in one of the most historical events of this century.
Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe are the STARS of Hidden Figures and everyone else seems to orbit around them and their storylines. The roles played by Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst were subsidiary and while they added to the overall storyline – they were clearly not THE story – something I appreciated wholeheartedly.
Rated PG and set to debut this weekend, Hidden Figures is a must-see movie for your family that my niece and I both thoroughly enjoyed. A refreshing, truly family-friendly inspirational film is a reminder of just how segregated (literally and figuratively) our country was just fifty years ago and how these women paved the way of the future in their roles with NACA.
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