A Heartwarming, Funny, and Engaging Tale of Black Women Mathematicians at NASA in the 1960s
In the days leading up to Gagarin’s flight, black women mathematicians Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) work at the NASA center in Virginia. As this is a segregated Southern state, the heroines face all sorts of humiliations related to their skin color. Dorothy is not promoted, even though she effectively manages the “colored” computers; Mary cannot attend advanced training courses held at a “white” college; and Katherine has to run to another building to use the restroom, as there are no “colored” restrooms in the building where her flight planning group works. Nevertheless, the women faithfully serve the common cause. Their achievements only begin to be noticed when Gagarin’s flight puts NASA in a bind, and the authorities no longer have time to maintain racial discrimination.
Katherine Johnson is the only one of the film’s heroines who is still alive.
According to the famous black comedian Whoopi Goldberg, she was deeply moved when, as a girl in 1966, she saw Nichelle Nichols in the TV series “Star Trek” as a communications officer on a spaceship. For the first time in her life, she saw a woman of her skin color on screen doing prestigious work, not toiling in the kitchen or sweeping the floor. Caryn Johnson (Goldberg’s real name) had no idea that by that time, one of NASA’s leading mathematicians was her fellow black woman and namesake, Katherine Johnson. Instead of celebrating Katherine and her group as role models for new generations of “colored” American women, the government suppressed their achievements. Years passed before the names of these women became widely known, even in narrow circles of space enthusiasts.
The film is based on the non-fiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly. The writer’s father was a NASA scientist, and she knew many of the heroines of her future work from childhood.
The second film by “St. Vincent” director Theodore Melfi was made to tell the story of black women mathematicians and give them the long-overdue credit they deserve. This is not a psychological drama delving into the emotional subtleties of women of the past, but almost a hagiography that admires the talent, drive, and resourcefulness of the main characters.
Admittedly, the film is shot in a tragicomic key, and the heroines sometimes look ridiculous. But this ridiculousness is due to the insane rules imposed on the heroines. For example, Katherine has to trot to the toilet with a stack of papers, as the round trip takes more than half an hour, and no one will do the woman’s work for her. Dorothy is forced to steal a programming book from the library, as books from the “white” section are not issued to blacks, and there is no necessary manual in the “colored” section. So, when the film puts the heroines in silly situations, it mocks not them, but racism, whose representatives are shown with much less sympathy. Katherine’s direct boss, played by Jim Parsons, appears as a petty and nasty type, and Kirsten Dunst plays Dorothy’s boss as a prim “Southern belle” who can express all her contempt for the descendants of her family’s slaves with one curve of her lips.
Fortunately, Henson and Spencer are talented character actresses, and their color is more than enough to turn “holy statues” into lively and entertaining women who are pleasant to root for, whatever they do. Monáe copes with this task worse, since she is more traditionally beautiful, but her role is less significant than that of her partners. Besides, no movie has ever suffered from a sexy mathematician with intelligent eyes. And, by the way, although Monáe is mainly known as a performer of pop-funk, she never gives reason to doubt that she is in her place in a movie where she does not have to sing or dance exuberantly.
Why This Movie Matters
It is clear that we do not particularly care who calculated the orbits of the first American manned flights and programmed the first American powerful computers. But “Hidden Figures” is valuable and interesting because it reflects how legal and comprehensive racism was in the United States just half a century ago. It is impossible to understand the current American tensions without such lessons of history, and “Hidden Figures,” in addition, also depicts Americans in the unusual role of catching up and never catching up (the flight to the moon remains outside the narrative). So, the film greatly pleases our national pride and at the same time tells a positive, sometimes very funny and quite universal story about people who defend their rights not by rallies and empty talk, but by such impeccable work that even their personal enemies reluctantly recognize their contribution to astronautics by the end of the film. Although the heroines do not need recognition - they know their worth.