HIDDEN FIGURES
20th Century Fox
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Showbiz
Grade: A-
Director: Theodore Melfi
Written by: Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi, based on Margo Lee Shetterley’s book.
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons
Screened at: Critics’ DVD, NYC, 12/10/16
Opens: January 6, 2017
I forget the source but one recent movie has a character state, “Well, one more day that I did not need Plane Geometry.” That may be true of him, but if you think that math is required from pre-k through undergraduate college simply to give jobs to teachers and professors, you’d be incorrect. In this age of computers, mathematicians have become proficient coders and software engineers are well-paid for their own special skills.
Here’s another point: Is math practical only to allow companies to have websites, to inflict their puffery advertising on us? No again. John Glenn, who died at the age of 95 just one month before “Hidden Figures” is released, is featured in the story by Margo Lee Shetterley, “Hidden Figures,” the young persons’ edition available at under eight bucks.
The story is inspirational, its impact certainly not diminished because it’s based on how three women helped John Glenn orbit the earth three times. The film is particularly important in showing how even in a southern state (Virginia) as recently as during the Kennedy administration, Black employees are segregated. This is true even though NASA is a federal program.
Now, any country that segregates a group—in this case Black women (though even White women are often held in less esteem than men)—is not only committing a moral wrong but is kicking itself in the face. Think of how some Middle Eastern countries that treat women as decidedly inferior to men and keeping them at home are going to be backward so long as they practice discrimination. Think of the contributions women with particular talents could make!
The three Black women who are highlighted by Theodore Melfi’s film are Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) who gets the most attention; Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer); and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe. Johnson, who is presumably the smartest of the three friends, is hired because of her talent with analytical geometry, while Mary Jackson is to go on to be an engineer and the first Black woman in the night division of a segregated high school. Melfi carefully builds his case that discrimination holds back the country, preventing the best minds to work (especially if they are women). The director, whose “St. Vincent” is a lightweight comedy, moves easily into penetrating fare as he hones in on the White workers doing their important job making calculations for the U.S. role in space, particularly after our country is kicked in the butt by the Soviet Union. Our most powerful enemy had put Sputnik into space, thereby setting the pace and daring the U.S. to surpass its mastery of science.
The travails of the three Black women find, most alarmingly, that Katherine Johnson had to walk, really run, a round trip of one half mile to get to the “colored women’s room” and could not even complete the filling of her coffee cup because the “colored” pot was almost empty. Cue in Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), the supervisor of the whole operation, who gradually sees Johnson’s talent and uses her to check on the work of others. Ultimately she allows the John Glenn flight to take place when it was threatened by yet another cancellation by plotting the coordinates to the hundredth of a decimal point.
To make the movie accessible to a wide audience, the director and the scripters carefully put in Hallmark Hall of Fame type commercialism and inspiration, moving the large group of mostly White men who at first look at the Black women with alarm and skepticism but are won over one and for all. I could have done without the romance and the coochy coo with the adorable young ‘uns, but after all, some people want to make sure that brainiacs have a life outside their jobs.
A first-rate production which takes three modest figures out from behind the pole. They are no longer hidden and their story should inspire no small number of viewers. With its PG rating, teachers from grade school through high school and maybe even college should reward their youths with trips to the cinema.
Rated PG. 126 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – A-
Acting – B+
Technical – A-
Overall – A-
