Year: 2016
Genre: Biography
Directed: Theodore Melfi
Stars: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell, Mahershala Ali, Karan Kendrick, Aldis Hodge, Maria Howell, Saniyya Sidney
Production: Fox 2000 Pictures
Hidden Figures
is the inspiring true story of the underappreciated and undervalued heroes of
the space race’s formative years. Specifically, the film recalls the various
trials and tribulations of mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, engineer Mary Jackson
and physicist Katherine G. Johnson all of whom were women, black and working on
the Mercury missions. When the film begins they’re all working among a pool of
colored women whom Johnson once sarcastically dubbed “computers in
skirts." Their job was to calculate launch and landing, which according to
history was a task all the women of the West Area Computing Unit took on with
vigor. As time neared the first American space flights, Johnson gained the
support of her colleagues and helped plot navigational charts and develop
launch windows for the likes of Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom and John Glenn.
Seriously, every little girl deserves a chemistry set... |
The accounts of these three women before,
during and after Mercury are intrinsically interesting enough to fill up an
entire series of movies or at the very least get the three-plus hour Right Stuff (1983) treatment. A cursory
look at their lives reveals a parade of stunning accomplishments, a slew of
firsts and a treasure trove of women-in-STEM stories that yearn to be told to
every young girl with a chemistry set.
Sadly for Johnson (Henson), Vaughan
(Spencer) and Jackson (Monae), Hidden Figures
is comparatively light, rerouting all its energy from the soul, work and math
to being just another cliché-ridden crowd-pleaser. Instead of the stories we
need told, the script populates the screen with watered-down cliffnotes and
gambles on the cast to give the film’s bullet points just enough of a unique
flavor. The institutional racism spread throughout sends powerful messages (as
often happens in these kinds of movies) but far too many times we get the
feeling we’re being setup for a cathartic change in the wind instead of feeling
the full impact of the institutional racism.
Nor do we face hard truths of its effects.
Each of our heroes responds to their plight in different ways. Vaughan uses
every resource to make her indispensable, going so far as to learn programming
to get leverage over her boss (Dunst). Her tact in getting what she wants is
certainly the most enlightened – she learns how to program then she teaches those
in her office. Yet her leadership through service always stops at the water’s
edge. “You don’t ask for equal rights, you demand it, you take it,” says
Jackson’s husband (Hodge) right before he’s put in his place. Then as if to
prove something, Jackson breaks barriers to become an engineer by asking
really, really nicely.
Johnson jumps over the pratfalls of
institutional racism by simply being smarter than everyone; a distinction Taraji
P. Henson wears with quiet dignity until she suddenly doesn’t for a brief rain
soaked scene that screams Oscar-bait. Because Johnson is so likeable a lot is
forgiven but at some point I really had to ask myself how many times they were
going to compliment her scenes of empowerment with Kevin Costner on autopilot.
That in conjunction with the treacly family and romance
scenes involving Mahershala Ali sink this film from being anything more than a feel-good,
run-of-the-mill, “boy that racism, so glad that’s over” movie. I kid you not, watching
this film in a crowded theater and hearing audiences react to every payoff was
like witnessing a Pavlovian experiment on complacency in real time. At least Hidden Figures isn’t as bad as The Help (2011). It’s more like Remember the Titans (2000) for nerds.
Final Grade: C+
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