WE’VE CRUNCHED THEnumbers
and it’s oficial: there could be no better time for
Hidden Figuresto come out. At a time when the
United States is locked in turmoil, with racial
divisions widening, misogny rife and science
itself under ire, along comes the incredible
true-life story of three female African-American
mathematicians, or “computors” as they were
known in the parlance of the time, who played
crucial roles at NASA in the early 1960s. You’ve
seen ilms about the Space Race before — but
probably never one about space racism.
Theodore Meli ’s ilm is both a thunderously
effective feel-good experience and a reminder
that even as we look to other planets, Earth still
has a long way to go.
Despite the serious, potentially stodgy
subject matter — this is a movie that deals with
both prejudice and Cartesian coordinates —
the material is handled with a light touch. The
lead trio are introduced at the side of a road:
their ride, a sky-blue Chrysler, has broken
down and a police oficer is nosing about,
suspicious. These two obstacles are deftly
overcome, revealing the traits of each of the
heroines and establishing their tight bond.
Mary (Monáe) is a quick-witted thrillseeker;
Dorothy (Spencer) is practical and unlappable;
Katherine (Henson) is quiet but needle-sharp.
As they are drafted into NASA, in demand for
their smarts as the agency races to beat Russia
to the moon, they are split up and have fewer
scenes together. But each of them brings a
different kind of strength to the screen.
Henson gets the A-plot, pulled out of an
all-women pool of computors and dropped
into the main event, the previously male-only,
Caucasian light research team. Despite her
promotion, here she is still subject to all
manner of demeaning rules: she cannot pour
herself a drink from the communal coffee pot,
she is not allowed to attend brieing meetings,
and when she needs the toilet she has to jog for
20 minutes to a distant restroom. As she
suffers these indignities stoically (there are
perhaps one or two too many musical
montages involving her legging it around the
campus while clutching stacks of paperwork),
you can see the pressure gauge inside her
cranking up and up. The release, when it
comes, is glorious.
There has been awards chatter too for her
two co-stars, even if they don’t make quite so
much of an impression. The drama is more
rote in Spencer’s subplot, though she gets to
deliver a couple of eloquent monologues.
Monáe’s strand, meanwhile, involves her ight
to get enrolled in a segregated school, and she
is as good as she is inMoonlight, leavening the
earnestness with lirty lines such as, “Equal
rights mean I have the right to see the ine in
every colour.”
Perhaps inevitably, it’s the supporting cast
who get the thinnest material.Hidden Figures
features more racist old white men than a
Trump cabinet, and even the more leshed-out
secondary characters are still pretty broad.
Dunst simpers and smirks as Dorothy’s
supervisor, while Parsons (though perfectly
cast for such a maths-heavy project, given his
Big Bang Theorybackground) struggles to
bring more than one dimension to his snippy
egghead. Fortunately, Costner is present to
bring both gravitas and heart to the NASA
workforce. A waist-coated ballbuster, chewing
furiously on gum and calculus problems alike,
his Al Harrison is a great representation of an
American idealist, slowly waking up to the fact
he’s lost his moral moorings.
It’s unashamedly pitched at a mass
audience — Pharrell’s poppy soundtrack drives
that home — and if you’re allergic to clichés,
you may want to pick up the non-iction book
upon which it’s based instead. But you’d be
missing out on a moving, important and
furiously upbeat tale for our times.
NICK DE SEMLYENVERDICTEssentiallyParabolas & Prejudice,it
isn’t the most nuanced piece of work out this
month. But nuance be damned — an uplifting
plea for equality, this is a story calibrated for
maximum effect.DIRECTORTheodore Melfi
CASTTaraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle
Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons
PLOTNASA is determined to send an astronaut
on a trip around the Earth before Russia beats
them to it. As the space agency becomes
increasingly more desperate, three big brains
are drafted in to help. The problem? It’s 1962,
they’re women and they’re black.
OUT16 FEBRUARY
★★★★★ RATEDPG/127 MINS
HIDDEN FIGURES