Watching the movie Hidden Figures against this historical backdrop, the struggles of the three main women characters become all the more stark considering this is a “true story” although the movie did take some creative liberties by over-dramatising a point or two – you’ll know them when you see them.
Based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the story revolves around Katherine G Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – three professional, brilliant and very obviously African-American women, who work in NASA in a white-male dominated institution.
Together, they each play a significant part in propelling America’s John Glenn, played by Glen Powell into space, making him the first American to orbit planet earth, after Russia beat them to it with Yuri Gagarin.
What shocks and saddens however is that these three African-American women, and scores of others like them, were never openly recognised for their contributions and remained invisible in their places of work and in the public eye until their stories were documented years later in a book and then made into a movie.
Taraji P Henson of “Empire” fame pulls off the role of Johnson with great aplomb, playing the genius but quiet and dignified mathematician who regularly puts her male colleagues, particularly her immediate boss, to shame with her spot-on calculations. Her forte? Her uncanny ability to calculate complex geometrical launch trajectories and flight paths for numerous NASA missions, in particular Glenn’s foray into space.
Octavia Spencer who thrilled audiences no end in “The Help”, plays Vaughan, a genius “human” computer who is consistently denied the promotion of supervisor despite putting in the hours and doing the work of one. Her break comes when IBM’s early mainframe stumps the men tasked to work it. Vaughan swoops in, trains herself in private how to become proficient in Fortran, an early computer language, and becomes one of the first computer programmers proficient in that language.
The feisty Mary Jackson, played by beautiful singer and model Janelle Monáe, was a research mathematician until she fought bias against her race and gender to become a brilliant aerospace engineer. Her journey to self-actualisation even involved having to obtain a court order just so she could attend an all-white, all-men evening class to study engineering. How’s that for true grit?
Despite the hardships, the three women are firm friends and count on each other to get through the daily grind of family and work commitments, especially in a society entrenched in racial and gender injustices.
The movie also shows that sexism was prevalent not only among white males at their workplace, but white females too, who having been so long subjected to male superiority, accept it as their lot in life, regardless of the colour of one’s skin. Vaughan’s immediate boss, Vivian Mitchell, played by Kirsten Dunst, is a case in point.
Kevin Costner, who plays the much feared Al Harrison and Johnson’s department head, comes across as more compassionate compared to the other males she has to work with, in particular Paul Stafford, played by Jim Parsons, who Johnson reports directly too.
The numerous times she stays late into the night, alone at the office, furiously scribbling mathematical equations on the huge blackboard and writing-up reports on new trajectory calculations that bear Stafford’s name on the cover, is enough to make one scream at the indignation of it all.
While the story does have a happy ending – history tells us so after all – the underlying racial and gender injustices rife in 1960s America does leave one with a bitter taste in the mouth.
With no hardcore crime, explicit sex scenes or cussing, Hidden Figures is a must-see for everyone in the family (it comes with a P13 rating) as it tells more than just a story of three women geniuses who worked behind-the-scenes in one of the most tumultuous and exhilarating times in American history.
With a hardworking, engaging and endearing cast, and directed by screenwriter-producer Theodore Melfi, you can count on Hidden Figures being an informative, uplifting and unforgettable story.